The Real Reason Christian Cults Demonize "Pride" .
In reply,
[first draft]
Let's clear this up, right from the start.
When Gavin says we "have to lower our pride" in order for Christianity to start feeling true,
what he means is:
We have to stop having self-respect.
And for that, we have to get rid of ALL the things we respect about ourselves;
including how good we feel about being autonomous, equitable, and rational.
Once someone like Gavin can 'hollow you out', and thus cause you to drop to your knees begging for someone to give you a NEW foundation and framework of identity, ...
Gavin's cult can then (and ONLY then) "get to work" re-designing you, so that "the new you" will be a "you" who is incapable of ever-again questioning the authority of that cult.
Through that process,
Gavin wants everyone to end up being proud to be Gavin's version of a "Christian".
He just doesn't want anyone to be proud to be ... anything else.
He also doesn't want anyone to be honest enough with themselves to CALL "true Christian"(themed) pride ... "pride'.
Because he's trying to create a false dichotomy where "pride" is always bad, and where true Christianity is pride-less.
They realized something useful about human psychology.
How people use language can have a profound impact on their cogitation.
Thus, part of their larger organized campaign to
control everyone's narrative
includes an organized effort to redefine how everyone uses words.
That often involves LOSING clarified-meaning; converting previously meaningful words into nebulous propogandist slogans.
It's part of their campaign of organized gaslighting.
They use that fog-machine to avoid accentuality, and to debilitate their targets;
while they maneuver themselves into social and political dominance over their prey.
It's meant to help his cult sculpt a fictional reality around you.
It's a Fiction which engorges their narcissistic egos,
and yet shelters those egos behind the artificial mask of being a "humble servant" under a Supreme Authority.
In those stories, it was "God" who made those men proud to be his chosen people. So then, of course, authority figures within that God-ordained religious infrastructure are going to feel extra good about themselves. Granted, there are healthy and unhealthy reasons available for people to feel good about themselves. But it's important to note, here, that Christian fundamentalist cults are raging against BOTH when they point accusingly at outsiders. It's what all cults and armies do. Tear people down to nothing; just so that you can build them back up into a system of helplessly crutched identity-dependency.
Within moral-authoritarian ideological systems, successfully-hobbled minds will look up(!) towards to God ... via looking upwards to YOU. That affords you the opportunity to SUPPLY FOR THEM a shiny and new replacement for their own personal narratives of identity and worth. That's a big part of what religious identity (same as any other form of Identity Politics) does to the mind. It's just orders-of-magnitude worse when the platform of pride is a God-Mask. In clinically Narcissistic religions, a person presumes to speak: a.) by an "authority" that it would be wrong (in fact, death-worthy levels of wrong) to question, and b.) as being (in any special way) "one" with a perfect Being; When it comes to "personal-God" religions, we're talking about: a conceptualized Super-Entity who couldn't be bothered to show up and speak for itself. We're talking about a "God" who just "concidentally" won't tolerate challenges to: a.) the premise of his authority, nor to b.) the ideas being expressed; ideas expressed by mere humans claiming to wield absolutely authority, and claiming to speak absolute truth; in his name. Consider the fantastic amounts of audacity, venturing into full-blown-narcissism, for ANY fallible human to presume being QUALIFIED to represent and channel a perfect being OVER the lives of everyone who stands below.
As both Dr Jennifer Bird and Dr Dan McLellan have recently gone on record to agree, ... Bibles were written by men with Major Personality Disorders; writing "How To" Guides for; "getting away with it". So when we see that manifest in Christian religions, "it's not "bug. It's a feature". Psychologically speaking, "God" becomes the narcissist's mask; because: Whenever someone stands and speaks upon any such pedestal, ... the premise (according to them) is: "When you hear me speak, you are hearing your GOD speak". You and I are, thus, expected to cower and quiver accordingly. It's far too much power to place into the mouth of a human. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even when a person only wields such power within pre-established parameters, it's going to corrupt them. In fact, the only way adult humans can have healthy social and societal systems is for those systems to have true equal voice shared between all humans. -So that EACH and EVERY human who ever proposes a "way to be" in the world, must rely completely on the weight of their arguments; not-at-all on the weight of un-equal authority. Thus, it befalls any "God", out of ethical and practical necessity, to only ever speak for themselves.
Christianity presumes to be ENTITLED to violate that ethic. As part of that corrupting process, it's going to be something personal-God "messengers" ("divine agents") take pride in. That will have even worse effect, if they call that pride "humility". Because then they're not recognizing and owning their own hubris; the hubris of entitled social inequality.
That hubris, with the entitled demand for their voice carrying greater weight (per "authority") than any-and-all rival voices, is inherently antithetical to justice and flourishing among humans. Again and again, it divides us.
Again and again,
the "saved" find themselves conquered.
You may imagine yourselves to be the chosen and called vessels ... so that "He" can in-dwell/fill you with his power and wisdom, so that "He" can be delivered FROM the heavens above TO lesser-people throughout our distant world. But "What does God need with a Starship?
It makes sense to help a frail old woman to cross a busy street.
But it's mere theatrics to help a "God". Although, it would be actually-necessary to help a non-God-entity pose as a God. But if you let anyone SEE you helping them, that's when "the gig is up". You haven't 'been exposed" by any outsider. You've done THAT to yourselves. Outsiders merely notice. The entirety of Yahweh-Lore is a self-contradicting, Orwellian mess.
Instead, they are 'strategic' about which prides to denounce. With the goal of validating their own cult, they perform boundary-maintenance for their ingroup. They demonizing everything they consider a threat to their cultural authority and flavor.
[the other category of pride in moral-authoritarian religious groups] 2. The kind of pride the ingroup LIKES; but which is disingenuously dressed up as "totally not pride". So if we're going to condemn those ancient Jews for their "pride", then we need to condemn Christianity on the same grounds. Not merely for the good-and-bad types of pride it tries to NOT have. BUT ALSO for the unhealthy kinds of pride Christianity REQUIRES. We'd also need to condemn the alleged "designer" of human neurophysiology and the designer(s) of religious systems. In that religious lore (per Jewish AND per Christian explanations OF that lore; respectively) "God" was a bad influence on them. In the context of those stories, the Pharisees did NOT build that "Fortress of Pride". Their "God" built it FOR them, "He" placed them in that situation, according to the lore. "He" built that system. "He" designed their neurophysiological failings'; making sure they can't HANDLE the levels of power he was going to give them. "He" orchestrated that AM-BIG-ifying religious system and then hooked their premise of identity and worth (their ego) into it. That's what allowed such tiny and cosmically insignificant people to BECOME signficant. They orated and embraced a "truth"-narrative which enabled them to "spiritually" graft themselves onto the only BEING who is 'larger than life'. And according to every rival-replacement "Abrahamic" religion, that very same "God" did the very same thing for them. -- In Gavin's rush forward, to 'arrive' at various points he hopes will help justify and spread his colonizing religion,
he just never slowed down enough to notice that unavoidable implication of his own theological narratives. According to Gavin's own religious narrative, even though Gavin doesn't realize this about his own religious narrative, ... "God" set those Jews up for that fail, as part of a bigger plan where he orchestrates yet another chance for himself to play victim. Yet again, "He" gets to be a victim to some humans; when he was really just a victim to his own choices. Divine Victimhood has been a 'running theme' ever since the stories about Adam and Eve. That theme continues today in every literal iteration of "The God Of Abraham".
Following the very very unfortunate example of a glorified Super-Parent (who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and is a violent psychopath), ... Christianity-cults go around bullying others; always ready to announce their victimhood whenever they get called out for it. So now here comes Gavin Ortlund; yet another "Christian soldier" trying to reclaim more of the power his cult of organized Narcissism LOST in recent centuries. The more members they have, the more power they have. Thus, it continues to be, in large part, a war of attrition. Right now, in developed nations, they are losing that war. However, they've been hijacking and weaponizing America's political machinery. With that, they've been engineering hostile takeovers of under-developed nations, to build covert bases; creating supply lines of financial resource to help fund their war. The more power they have, the more psychologically, socially, and politically VIOLENT their religious culture becomes. -But not by accident. Rather, by design.
Bonus material; for the topic.
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