Gregory: What was that?
Heckler: I don’t know, I was to busy going at Big Nose.
Man: I think it was, “Blessed are the cheesemakers”!
Gregory’s wife: What’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Gregory: Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.[RIGHT]— The Life of Brian[/RIGHT]
Stranger
You know who else thinks he can solve every problem with “You’re fired” ? 
1 Jesus came to tear down the temple, taught love and created ‘the way’
2 Paul brought back the temple, what he was trained in, rebranded as Christianity, but the same thing but including the name of Jesus.
So yeah, eye fit the eye stuff, holier then thou.
That I should read the OP, to find out what it was really saying and how broad a brush was being used.
I’m genuinely curious as to whether your hypothesis, that hateful commenters almost always self-identify as Christians, is actually true. Because I can think of several possibilities:
Even if it is #1 that’s true, we have to be careful not to commit the statistical fallacy of confusing the percentage of haters who identify as Christian with the percentage of Christians who are full of hate.
But with that all said, the OP still has a legitimate question: why are so many—regardless of exactly how many there are—people who are full of hate so ready to invoke the Christian religion?
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. Paul was a big advocate of “grace, not Law” and “you don’t have to be Jewish to be Christian.”
I think this is funny … it’s not all that far off The Truth either … so many of these churches think everyone else is going to hell … [shakes head] … the sad truth is [del]they’re[/del] we’re all wrong …
The meek inherit the Earth, not the blow-hards …
I was just reading how Sri Lanka is pissed at Facebook for not deleting hate filled posts by the Sinhalese wanting to ethnic cleanse. And we know that the Buddhists in Myanmar are ethnic cleansing the Muslims and we know about them. Not to mention the Hindus.
Makes you want to sing National Brotherhood Week doesn’t it.
It goes for any religious person convinced he has the way and anyone who does not have the way is evil or stupid. Helped by the ministers who clearly would find that admitting that other religions were just as good would cut down on sales.
A while back it seemed that every Dear Abby column would have some woman writing in about her Christian man - and every one of these Christian men cheated on her, beat her or stole from her or all three. Same deal it seems.
Nah, I think all these self-declared Christians are Christians, and are going to heaven. But because they are so convinced of their views, the heaven they go to is going to have no one else in it, since no one else is good enough to get in. Solitary confinement for eternity.
I certainly don’t want to go to wherever Mike Pence is going. Not only would it have Mike Pence, but every meal is probably Wonder Bread with mayonnaise.
Stranger
Believing that Jesus existed/was the son of God/died for your sins doesn’t have much of a bearing on whether or not someone is an asshole. Now, an asshole probably isn’t a good Christian but the bar for that is higher than simple belief.
It isn’t christians, it is people who score high on authoritarianism. Jimmy Carter is a Christian and he isn’t an asshole.
People who score high on authoritarianism tend to be bigoted, entitled, hypocritical and abusive. They also tend to be drawn to religious fundamentalism. I think you’re confusing smoke for fire. Authoritarianism is the problem, religious fundamentalism is just a symptom.
It is no different in Islamic nations, the authoritarians are drawn to Islamic Jihad. In the US they are drawn to authoritarian politics that take everyone’s rights away, and militia movements.
In atheist nations they are probably drawn to nationalism and ideological purity. I’d assume.
*Au·thor·i·tar·i·an·ism
ôˌTHäriˈterēənizəm/
noun
noun: authoritarianism
The enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
Lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.*
Ok, that’s the first explanation that sort of has a ring of truth to it. Back when I used to be one of the people I’m talking about, I fully believed that the man was the head of the household - full stop. Women obey your husbands. I thought there was nothing wrong with racial profiling because “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to hide”. Homosexuality is wrong so you deserve to be punished…
I just find it so distressing that people claim to be followers of Christ and then act about as un-Christ-like as they can.
I think it bothers me so much and to such an extreme because I was one of them and didn’t know it. And I know that there really isn’t much hope of most of them seeing how wrong they are because it took freaking years and years for my old belief system to be chipped away.
Considering the number of cops that are shot dead by criminals it’s very much the time to pipe up with “yah, but cops matter too”
It’s saying white lives, Hispanic lives, Asian lives matter too, not just black lives.
Funny how you didn’t care about that until after black people started getting uppity and standing up for themselves.
People who score high on RWA tend to be very drawn to identity politics, are very hostile to outsiders, have a lot of submissive respect for what they consider to be legitimate authority figures, and believe in traditional norms.
Thats the problem at root. If as a society we could lower the levels of authoritarianism, that would go a long way to making society better. If you have a secular nation, the authoritarian personalities just get drawn to irreligious authoritarian ideologies like fascism or communism (assuming communism is an established belief. In the USSR, the authoritarians tended to support communism). In a nation like Japan which has no real religion, the RWA types probably support a return to the days of the Japanese empire.
If the criminals influenced the courts to the extent that lots of cop killers got off, then Cop lives matter would make a lot of sense as a movement.
We pretty much all agree shooting cops is bad. But it seems a lot in power don’t think the same about cops shooting black people.
You know, I was kind of regretting starting this thread because I feel like what I was trying to get across was not coming through. But I’m so glad now that I did because I think this is the answer I was looking for.
People who are RWA’s would naturally migrate towards a belief system that reinforced their preconceived notions. Fundamentalist Christianity would fill that need.
Maybe it’s not Christianity that turns people into haters but rather it’s hater types that migrate towards certain Christian denominations.
Thank you so much for posting. It’s been really eye-opening.
Howabout (sic) Red Lives Matter?
"For every 1 million Native Americans, an average of 2.9 of them died annually from 1999 to 2015 as a result of a “legal intervention,” according to a CNN review of CDC data broken down by race. The vast majority of these deaths were police shootings. But a few were attributed to other causes, including manhandling. That mortality rate is 12% higher than for African-Americans and three times the rate of whites. "
We only Matter during November, I guess.
Sounds like you’re arguing that people forget, or don;t know, or don;t believe, that “cops matter.” Gotta say, I’m really curious about where you live* that you perceive that police lives (or white lives etc.) are widely believed not to matter.
*Geographical location, but also types of people you associate with.
I live in the “liberal Northeast,” in a liberal community; I attend a (Christian) church where the current priest organized a six-hour trip to the recent Washington gun protests and where the previous priest was extremely active in a state group working to end gun violence.
About six years ago a police officer in my small city was shot and killed while pursuing a criminal. He remains the only officer on the force ever to be killed by a suspect. It was a tragic, tragic situation, and it cut deeply into the life of the community.
In the days following the shooting, the newspaper was full of details about what happened; everybody, it seemed, was talking about it; the funeral was extremely well attended and attracted a lot of people who didn;t even know him.
My very liberal church, under the guidance of the (previous) priest, hosted a fundraising concert with the proceeds donated to various organizations in the fallen officer’s name (with the blessings of the police department).
Six years later, the officer still looms large around here. There is an annual blood drive in his honor. There is a fundrasing motorcycle ride that takes place every year as well. There’s a plaque near the spot where he was gunned down. There’s a highway interchange named for him. I’d say that the vast majority of the people living here would recognize the name right away.
I don’t know anyone in my city who thinks this attention is undeserved, anyone who resents the focus given to this man, anyone who shrugs his or her shoulders metaphorically or physically and says “Well, he deserved it,” or “Well, it was bound to happen,” or “Well, he knew what he was getting into, becoming a cop and all.” I mean, maybe they exist, but I’d think I’d have run into them somewhere, given the circles I move in, and I haven’t.
As this story shows, in my world at least cops DO matter, and pretty much everybody knows that cops matter. They matter a lot. And they are, at least in my world, deeply mourned and much celebrated when a terrible tragedy happens and one of them is murdered by a criminal.
So again, I’d like to know: what world do you live in where that is not the case? What community do you live in, who do you hang out with, what articles do you read/TV shows do you watch, where an officer is shot and killed and no one pays attention? I would really, really like to know.
Because the Christian message of love and understanding and such just doesn’t spread as well as having something to be angry about and hatred. Sin is an easier sell.
In a country that is predominantly Christian, it just isn’t surprising that the most popular version of Christianity would be hate-filled. The real thing is hard. Really hard. It’s not going to be the most culturally accepted. Jesus flat out said that his way was narrow.