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It's often been pointed out that Right Wing Media Literacy is poor.
We see this often when they root for villains or characters intentionally unsympathetic, like Bojack's Dad, Homelander.... heck Trump's 2020 Re-Election team compared him to Thanos, saying he was "inevitable" and making gifs of him as Thanos snapping the DNC away.
So this isn't anything new in theory, but it's amazing that this "They're rooting for the bad guys because they don't know how media works" problem extends to the FUCKING BIBLE!
The Heroes of the Bible are intentionally meek a lot of the time, the point is that even when you aren't powerful yourself, your dedication to your Faith and standing up for what's right should be enough to make up for your shortcomings, for the Lord will lift your burden.
It's why "Proud Christian" doesn't make any sense, it's a very Pro-Humility faith!
I mean, David literally had a thousand wives and concubines and he still had to go and fuck one of his best soldiers' wives.
He got her pregnant and then orchestrated the guys desth to cover up his sin, the baby was cursed to die, and the second the baby died, he was just like, "Okay, cool, I'm over it" and he's still considered the beloved of God.
The gist of the story is that people that are pointed to high places and have heroic unbelievable achievements can make horrible mistakes and still be forgiven by God as long as they repent.
Nobody is perfect, not the undefeatable giant Goliath, nor the beautifully-hearted musical genius hero warrior king David of Israel.
Anybody whose understanding of David stops at, He killed Goliath with a slingshot" doesn't deserve any sort of authority when it comes to interpretation of the Bible.
My interpretations of the Bible are as useful as my interpretations of any other fantasy series. Just because something has a deeper meaning doesn't mean it is useful, correct, or should be followed. Every episode of South Park ends with what lessons they learned. It's also more up to date and in tune with the realities of the world around it. The reason people don't worship South Park is because they haven't been systematically brainwashed to do so.
How I know this: god told me so
I was cut, by the edge.
The Bible's track of history is unique in that it doesn't just show when the people written about did good, it also shows when they did bad. David was good, until he got into that affair with Bathsheba, and indirectly got her husband killed in battle. He was called out on that part by a prophet speaking in behalf of God, and the only reason he lived was that he repented, but he still lost their first child because of it.
Solomon was the king with a thousand wives. He asked God for smarts when presented with an option to ask for anything and be granted it, and he was granted that and more for thinking soiritually and not materially, but the he started getting into the whole wives and concubines thing. Another example of "started out good, but then got sucked into doing bad", as he was given advance prophecy that Israel would be broken into pieces over this. Which happened when his son took over and made things worse.
This means that Canada defends the israelites, and therefore has God on their side.
he point is that even when you aren’t powerful yourself, your dedication to your Faith and standing up for what’s right should be enough to make up for your shortcomings, for the Lord will lift your burden.
Really? And here I thought it was just another awful story from an awful book that nobody bothers to read.
Please, tell me how the book of Job is all about being faithful to god, even during the worst times. And completely ignore the premise of the book, and the horrific things visited upon the man for simply being "god's most faithful servant". Oh wait, no that wasn't enough. God had to murder his family and destroy his life because he made a bet with the literal devil. What a cool guy.
Your book is garbage and you should feel bad.
I've been saying it for a while, but a lot of the US so called Christian groups actually aren't. I'm not really sure what they should be called. Pseudo Christian maybe?
Sure, their fundamentalist, militant beliefs are not rooted in any intelligent reading of their scripture, but, in my opinion, just like humans can not evolve out of our ancestry (humans are apes, are monkeys, are primates, are mammals, are chordates) movements cannot escape the roots of their religion. And they constitute a vast, but for it's size relatively homogeneous, culturally distinct sect of Christianity. So let's not create a "true scotsman" here, just because they don't abide by your (or my) interpretation of their faith doesn't mean they aren't Christians, similar differences in belief exist in many religious sects in many different religions. And at least they violently "claim" to be Christians and will defend that position with vigor. Something apparent in all the big american sects that, from the outside, seeem to have little to nothing to do with the teachings in the New Testament. Like Mormonism.
Just like Christianity, Judaism and Islam are still abrahamic religions, those new american sects will always remain christian in their roots.
For this sect, Christian trappings have fused with the American Civil Religion, the Red Scare and the "Lost Cause"-myth. In this worldview, the defeat in a holy war (American Civil War) facilitated the struggle between evil, socialist, secular, globalist, minority-loving, weak liberalism and the good, pious, capitalist, nationalist, exceptionalist, (mostly white) red-blooded conservatism.
This might actually constitute a new kind of religion, but it is heavily blanketed in pseudo-christian trappings and lots of old-testament fire and brimstone. And this mind-virus relies on the widespread christian beliefs in the US to spread into new hosts. A lack of (objective, comparative) religious education with, at the same time, a deeply religious habitat is the fertile ground that allows this to spread. What you or me would interpret as a "correct" (or "less wrong") christian faith, if followed culturally or blindly and without haven given it enough thought, actually aides in the spread of this militant, nationalistic, chauvinist movement that has infected the US and is (imho) at the root of Reaganism, the Tea-Party and the entire Maga-Movement. It has been mutating and getting more malignant for a while now and I honestly have no idea how this could ever be excised from the US.
Your take on it is interesting and probably quite close to the truth of it. Those sects are now part of the US identity for many and are there to stay despite their continuing mutations.
Many of them could pretty accurately be called Mammonites.
American with christian characteristics?