Why are Christians so full of hate?

In My Humble Opinion
221

Look at it from the opposite direction. Suppose you’re a hateful person. What religion would suit you? It sure would be nice if you could find a religion that will forgive your hateful nature, allow you to keep being hateful, and still promise you a ticket to heaven. The icing on the cake is that you get to say you have a person relationship with the all-powerful creator of the universe. What’s not to like?

Are you sure?

Twenty years ago, I would have agreed. I believed that most of the problems in the world stem from the fact that people aren’t listening to the words that Jesus actually spoke. Unfortunately, Jesus never wrote anything down. Funny, that. And the story says he had 12 Apostles who were eye witnesses. Surely three or four of those would have written down what Jesus said, while he was still alive, so Jesus could proof-read it. No? Okay, then right after his death, they would have written it all down while it was fresh in their minds. Still no. The book of Matthew was written some 40 years after Jesus died. Luke was not one of the 12 Apostles. Neither was Mark. There was an Apostle named John but the book of John was written about 80-100 years after Jesus died, when John the Apostle would have been dead himself. Then there’s Paul, who also was not one of the 12 Apostles. Paul bragged about how me never met Jesus in person, seemed to think that made him superior to the 12 Apostles somehow. Paul almost never quoted anything Jesus actually said. Paul loved to quote the Old Testament but not Jesus.

Bottom line, even if you believe that Jesus was a real person (and not a fictional character, or an amalgam of several real people), it’s pretty much impossible to know what he actually said vs. what stories were made up about him decades later. Yes some of the stories make him out to be a really forgiving person who wants you to be nice to everyone. But other stories make him out to be an unforgiving asshole who says that you’re better off plucking out your eye rather than admiring the shape of someone’s buttocks. Which represents the real Jesus (if there was one)? It’s impossible to say.

That’s one of the brilliant things about Christianity and why it appeals to hateful people. You can make it say just about anything you want it to say. You don’t even have to read the holy book. Just say that Jesus tells you things telepathically and no one can prove that it’s not true.

222

To that point, it was a time when it was not that far of a jog from admiring someone’s buttock to raping them. The idea was, if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, not that you have sinning eyes, so must be blinded.

223

But you aren’t hated for following Christ, certainly not in the United States or most Western countries. You’re the majority religion and totally dominate the cultural perception of what religion is supposed to be. No one hates you for following Christ. You are quite literally making this up.

What is bothering people in this thread is when the politically active part of the Christian majority uses their power to inflict harm on vulnerable people. That’s what this thread is actually about.

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I’m not sure, but this may be an anachronistic way of looking at it. As I understand it, the world Jesus lived in was an oral culture, not a literary one. It wouldn’t have occurred to Jesus’s followers to think “This is important: I’d better write it down” so much as “This is important: I’d better remember it, and tell lots of other people.”

And we don’t know that none of the Apostles wrote down what Jesus said, just that no such source survives today. For all we know, that’s what the hypothesized “Q” used as a source by the gospel writers could have been.

If there wasn’t anything divine or special about Jesus, then why does it matter whether some words were something he actually said or not. If you find the words themselves valuable, heed them; if not, don’t.

If, on the other hand, Jesus was God, and/or sent by God, it’s not that much of a stretch that God could have made sure that his words were preserved as accurately as we need them to be.

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My OP should have been “Why does the politically active part of the Christian majority uses their power to inflict harm on vulnerable people?”

Too bad I’m not smrt :slight_smile:

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Well, I got the gist of it. I’m sure most people did.

Part of what the Christian political right does, of course, is tell its flock they’re oppressed and hated. It’s a big, big part of the evangelical public narrative that they are under siege. The hilarious “War on Christmas” nonsense is actually a small part of this, with larger parts of the story being Liberals Use the Courts To Take Away Our Rights, Hollywood Elites Hate Us, Muslims Are Out To Get Us, Homosexuals Threaten Us, and just the general pounding away at the idea that being a Christian is a hazardous thing.

While it’s just preposterous - probably no religion has an easier time of being really loud about their religion, in the First World, than Evangelicals in the USA - it’s one that has gained a lot of traction in the believers. It’s easier to rally people around a political cause if they feel threatened. “Man, things are damn good for us Christians in America” is absolutely, one hundred percent true, but it’s not motivating. Nobody is moved to vote or donate to your cause if they think things are sweet. If you convince them the barbarians are at the gates, though, they’ll happily donate money and time to a cause, even a truly odious one. A lobby group “Focus on the Family,” a millions-of-dollars endeavour largely devoted to trying to hurt the rights of gay people, can’t exist unless you can convince the donors that gay people threaten them.

Many years ago, when the first George Bush was President, I had a debate with a very left wing friend. His position was that Reagan and Bush were evil for letting Christians have a lot of political influence. My position was that Reagan and Bush weren’t a whole lot more Christian than Julius Caesar and while they talked a lot about such things, in practice, never throw more than the driest bones to the evangelicals; you didn’t see them actually TRYING to have Roe V. Wade overturned.

In retrospect, I was right but, really, I was wrong. It was quite true neither Reagan nor Bush really gave a crap about evangelical politics. However, by allowing them in the door, they normalized it and started the process for the Republican Party to be taken over by Christian zealots. (Barry Goldwater warned against this decades ago, so he saw it coming.) when CelticKnot talks about how Christians are hard done by in America, s/he is reflecting something the Christian rank and file have had drilled into them for decades, for the specific purpose of enhancing the political power of radical politicians and leaders. You can count on the votes of scared people.

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I like this.

It seems to me that Christian zealots have a lot more in common with Muslim zealots and Buddhist and Hindu zealots than to Christianity as a whole. The word zealot originally referred to a Jewish sect which advocated violence to overthrow Roman rule in Judea (that went well).

All zealots need enemies. Right wingers everywhere find enemies in the marginalized. Religion just doesn’t seem to have much effect on this. I’ve never understood why they find the already-victimized so threatening, and the people who actually do them harm (looking at you, global capitalist kleptocracy and your enforcers) so laudable.

Right wingers have a huge ick don’t let it touch me built into their dna. That’s why homosexuality is so particularly vile to them. It’s contaminating, or even contagious.

But painting all Christians as rightwing zealots filled with righteous hate won’t aid anything. I mean there are more than a billion Christians out there. There are maybe 82 million 'evangelical" Christians in the US? I mean that’s a lot of people but it sure isn’t everyone who calls themselves Christian.

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I think **RickJay **and **CelticKnot **both hit on valid points, although contradictory:

Christians do have it good in America, but also bad as well.

Good = Christianity is the most populous religion in America, and you can find churches almost everywhere. If you were a Buddhist, you might have to search far and wide to find a person like you, especially if you were in rural Kansas or something. There are dozens of Christian colleges, many thousands of churches, etc.

Bad = by being the most populous and prominent religion, Christianity is vulnerable to the “punch-up vs. punch-down” effect. Since Christianity is perceived as the top dog, it is much more culturally and socially acceptable - and safer - to take potshots at the guy at the top than the ones in the middle or bottom (i.e., Islam, Hinduism, Shintoism, etc.) it’s also physically safer to mock Christianity than Islam, too, as well (everyone took note of Charlie Hebdo, even though that was across the pond.) And since Christianity is perceived as old-fashioned, mainstream, the “older generation’s religion” and whatnot, it is also considered edgy and cool and independent to take a stance opposing the religion than in favor of it. And Christians naturally perceive this double standard.

It is also natural for people of all political and religious stripes to play up a threat. Take gun owners who think the government will confiscate their guns, or pro-choicers who think that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, or election activists who think that Voter ID laws will disenfranchise voters, etc.

I think people who sneer or are bewildered, “Why do those Christians think they’re persecuted in America?” often do not grasp three things:

  1. People are naturally defensive. Person A will naturally perceive a threat against Person A much more acutely than Person B will perceive that threat against Person A.
  2. “Persecution” doesn’t just mean martyrdom - it’s true that nobody is feeding Christians to the lions in America. Many people think that if a religion is not being actively murdered or jailed or assaulted, it’s not being persecuted. There are far more subtle shades at work - mockery, stonewalling, isolation, the slow chipping away at it, etc.
  3. Liberals usually take “equality” to mean treating people differently based off of different context; conservatives generally take “equality” to mean treating everyone equally regardless of context. Not that everyone in the “Christianity is persecuted” debate identifies as liberal or conservative, but it plays a big role.
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As a former child of a fundamentalist Christian family, my insight is that these people use Christianity to fight fears. There’s a tribal mentality that perpetuates a fearful ‘us vs. them’ outlook. They’re terrified of anyone not a part of their ‘tribe’ (friends/family/neighborhood/etc).

It’s not about love of neighbor for these people though they might not even realize it. It’s about survival. In fact, I’ve noticed there’s a prevalence amongst some of these types in which sincerity of emotion is more trusted than hard fact.

For example, how Trump riled up the supremacists/evangelicals/etc with passionate statements totally based on nothing at all during his campaign. There’s a section of Christianity that is intensely fearful and intensely distrusting.

Of course, the Christian religion has been used by many over the centuries to many ends. Sometimes it’s all about controlling the masses. Sometimes people hide their insecurities/faults by chaining themselves to religious doctrine. Sometimes people are purely evil and use the Bible to justify any heinous behavior they have.

One would hope that people would go into a religion with pure intentions and focus on self-reflection and form genuine humility and love for mankind. We live in a country and in a time of general peace and prosperity, and Christianity in the US is blossoming overall into more of a pursuit of love and acceptance of others. (Which is super cool. We have female and gay pastors, even.)

Basically, I felt I needed to preface my conclusion with all of that because it needs the context to really stand out. And, my conclusion is kind of complicated even so. I think Christianity is a tool. It’s benign on its own. It’s the way people go into the Bible that determines the effect it has on them. It can be a very powerful tool, however. People can unravel basic patterns of human behavior and become incredibly twisted and beyond the reach of reason on religious grounds.

If one is to convince a person there’s an almighty god threatening to eternally burn their immortal soul in hell if they don’t do something, suddenly it’s about survival. I think that’s the main difference that is most directly responsible for such “hateful” Christians - an absolute terror of God.

It’s perpetuated by the families these people are born into, sure, but there’s also a lot of thinking people who don’t end up hateful Christians even so.

I can’t begin to guess why someone would take the Bible so literally and become fearful of hell with absolutely no proof God even exists. (That’s the essence of faith. The Bible straight up promises you will never have proof, and faith would be worthless to God if you only believed after seeing.)

But essentially, I don’t think it would be likely there would be many hateful Christians without the constant terror of burning in hell. I don’t think it’s really about “hating gays, etc” as much as it’s about existential fear. (We can argue of course about how conscious these people are as to their motives, and I’d concede very few would readily come to the realization unless they really gave it deep thought.)

(And, of course, there’s just a fear rural communities have of outsiders, generally, throughout the country. But we’re talking about Christianity specifically.)

230

Yep. A lieutenant is a placeholder.