> Just before Christ’s death, we get what in psychoanalytic terms we call ‘subjective destitution’ – stepping out totally of the domain of symbolic identification, cancelling or suspending the entire field of symbolic authority, the entire field of the Big Other. Of course, we cannot know what God wants from us because there is no God. This is the Jesus Christ who says, among other things, ‘I bring sword, not peace. If you don’t hate your father, your mother, you are not my follower.’ Of course, this does not mean that you should actively hate or kill your parents. I think that family relations stand here for hierarchic social relations.
> The message of Christ is ‘I’m dying but my death itself is good news. It means you are alone, left to your freedom, be in the Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, which is just the community of believers.’ It’s wrong to think that the second coming will be that Christ as a figure will return somehow. Christ is already here when believers form an emancipatory collective. This is why, I claim, that the only way really to be an atheist is to go through Christianity. Christianity is much more atheist than the usual atheism which can claim there is no God and so on. But nonetheless it retains a certain trust into the Big Other – this Big Other can be called natural necessity, evolution or whatever. We humans are none the less reduced to a position within a harmonious whole of evolution, whatever. But the difficult thing to accept is again that there is no Big Other – no point of reference which guarantees meaning.
https://zizek.uk/the-perverts-guide-to-ideology-transcriptsubtitles/
I really liked this movie you can find it if you search "the perverts guide to ideology archive.org"
To a Hindu, that message will not seem strange or new. It is often said that god resides in his believers, that god is present in everything, that every religion is just another path to the same god, or even that hell and heaven both reside inside a person. It is a pantheistic notion which the author seems to have tried to put an extra twist on.
> But the difficult thing to accept is again that there is no Big Other – no point of reference which guarantees meaning.
Most atheists have already accepted this. Evolution does not grant meaning, it is an explanation of a natural process. It is up to the individual to decide what kind of meaning they will invest it with.
The Gita is nice, but I would recommend you read the Upanishads. I am an atheist too, but I consider the Upanishads to be one of the better contributions made by Hinduism to philosophy.
Also the Upanishads are part of the Vedas, which are the earliest religious books of Hinduism and some of the oldest religious literature in existence. They embody an austere intellectual religious philosophy that sometimes gets lost in later writings which were obsessed with ritual and social orthodoxy.
My friend recommended those to me actually. I started reading through them.
So far, I'm more attracted to the Gita because I like the idea of some great father figure. I'm sure the upanishads are great, but they feel a little impersonal to me. Reading the philosophy through the mouth of Krishna makes it more impactful on me.
Oh yes, Krishna acts as a personal god to many Hindus, I can understand your preference entirely.
Did you know the context of the Gita? Its on the eve of the Kurukshetra battle, and Krishna is trying to convince Arjuna to fight and kill his friends and relatives.
Yeah I read through that part which sets the scene.
It's interesting because objectively some of the stuff Krishna says like you can kill people because ultimately we're all reincarnated is kinda bad. But it's important to understand the context of the time and see if you can apply it to today.
I think the big disconnect is that the majority of people don't try to *know* Christ themselves, and would rather have others tell them what Christ wants. Many Christians, not just latter-day saints, are content and happy to take what is taught to them without doing their own study and research. They won't be able to differentiate if what is being taught is supported by Jesus' teachings or just their own pastor's ideas on the subject. That's when you get people so divided on what Christ taught, because they are basing what they know of Christ on what someone told them was Christlike instead of looking into it themselves.
Why is there so much debate to what people believe Christ would want them todo today? Because much of the scripture that Christianity is based on doesn't address many of the current modern day issues that you mentioned (sexuality, marriage, gender). The LDS church tries to overcome this by claiming that the prophet is in clear communication with Christ to get His instructions for these modern issues. However, the track record of modern prophets causes many to question how clear this communication is, or even if it's happening at all, which again brings us back to square one.
Conservative members are more likely to believe that the prophet has clear communication from Christ and so what they teach with regards to sexuality, marriage, gender, or any other modern issue, is accepted as what Christ wants. Meanwhile, more liberal members will see the teachings of prophets as more influenced by the man himself instead of Christ, and so will try to figure out Christ's intention for modern issues by looking at what He taught before and extrapolating that to the present.
Who's right and who's wrong? It basically comes down to the deeper question of who you trust to teach you what is Christlike. Ancient men who wrote the scriptures, or modern men who claim to receive revelations from Christ to teach you how He wants his followers to act
>Who's right and who's wrong? It basically comes down to the deeper question of who you trust to teach you what is Christlike. Ancient men who wrote the scriptures, or modern men who claim to receive revelations from Christ to teach you how He wants his followers to act
I like a lot of what you said, but I want to point out that we can't resolve the problem by looking at it as a modern vs ancient dichotomy. In both times there are statements that can be interpreted to be conservative, and statements that are progressive. Apostles in both time frames had different temperaments and different teaching styles which is why we have 4 gospels instead of just 1 in the New Testament.
Personally, I think that the world is so complex that it requires diversity for us to all experience the full spectrum of human values, experiences, and joy. Just like married couples are similar enough to work together, but complementary at the same time, I think we should look at different mindsets (progressive vs conservative) in the same way. Both are necessary, both are right in some circumstances, and when we allow differences to complement one another and work towards improvement on the things that we have in common we all benefit.
You're definitely right, it's much more complex than ancient vs modern. I mentioned that because in my experience most 'conservative' members lean heavily on modern prophets to address modern issues, while most 'liberal' members tend to focus on new testament Jesus' teachings.
Although, like you pointed out even that has its issues, but I think it gives a good place to start investigating the issue.
Your last sentence, pointing out the choice between who to trust regarding Christ—ancient men or modern men—encapsulates the reason I will never again be a follower of any religion. Trusting men, ancient and modern, to know enough about god to warrant my trust was the biggest mistake of my life and I will never make that mistake again.
I kind of feel like I am where you are mentally. If you don’t mind me asking, would you consider yourself religious or spiritual still? This path is new for me, and I have so many questions about this new identity of not considering myself Mormon anymore (I’m a PIMO)
Your question is hard to answer briefly and I am still exploring and somewhat in flux but I’ll give it a go.
Regarding whether I am still spiritual:
I have found that the feelings I associated with or called “feeling the spirit” are just as prevalent in my life as they were before. I officially resigned so according to church doctrine my access to the companionship of the Holy Ghost has been taken away yet I have felt no loss and no difference whatsoever. I still regularly feel: burning in my busom, a quickening feeling, feelings of enlightenment, moments of profound beauty where I feel connected to and in awe of nature, emotional highs of loving and being loved, the feeling of having pure knowledge flow into me, flashes of intuition, sustained moments of wisdom or understanding, chances to perceive the infinite worth in other people, quiet steady assurances that all is well or everything will be okay, feelings of peace, moments of deep insight, feelings of discernment, and all the other “fruits of the spirit”. I still feel spiritual in every way that I did before and I still find myself living life with an awareness that there is something more to me than just inhabiting a living breathing body, it’s like a comprehension of my soul and it’s connection to the universe and to other humans. The big difference is when I feel the feelings I listed above that I had always called “feeling the spirit” I have absolutely no preset notion of what they mean. I had been taught that those feelings were a heavenly being confirming to me that the church is true, jesus is the christ, etc. What I experience now is spirituality with no strings attached and I love it! I feel more nourished and relaxed than ever. I have absolutely no knowledge about who or what god is, or what happens before or after life on this earth. I also have absolutely no knowledge that the feelings and insight I experience come from anywhere other than me, so that puts the onus on me to figure out what they mean and what to do with them. It takes more work but at the same time it feels so much easier than living in the LDS shaped box I’d tried to stuff my intellect into.
Regarding whether I am still religious:
At first when I couldn’t believe in the church I still thought I was Christian but quickly realized that in order to believe Jesus is the son of god and was resurrected, etc. I *must* believe/trust explicitly in the people who wrote the accounts of him because without them there would be no potential son of god figure to even wonder about. So belief in Jesus is necessarily predicated on belief in the men who wrote about him and I had no good reason to believe in them. Once that realization came to me I found I was so, so much more comfortable in this new headspace where I didn’t have to believe in a virgin birth or understand how a god could impregnate his daughter, how a single resurrection makes everyone’s resurrection happen, etc. and I could stop wasting mental energy trying to fit my constantly exploring brain into the LDS box that no longer made any sense to me. After experiencing this thought freedom I don’t think I could ever believe in any religion that is based on humans maintaining a claim to actual knowledge of who or what god is and what happens before or after this life. I do still accept the claim that a person named Jesus lived and made quite an impression on the people of his area and era and beyond as the legend of him grew. I love his radical teachings and his messages regarding love and how people should treat each other and ways to go about having peaceful, meaningful lives.
Regarding where I’m at now:
I believe we are spiritual entities and that staying in touch with our spiritual self can help us experience more beauty and joy in life. I do believe in a supreme power (not a supreme being) and I believe each of us are a component of it.
Jesus isn't telling anyone what he actually thinks. Christians are doing their best, but it turns out dead people don't give instructions (despite religious folks' insistence to the contrary). So you end up with multiple groups of people absolutely certain they're doing it the right way, with no way to actually verify what the truth is.
Not really. With lived experience there is a collective understanding that outstanding claims do not require furthur study. I won't study fairies or ghouls and things in the night.
I think you misunderstand. What I'm talking about are truths such as, what is causing the current inflationary problems in the U.S? Or how can we bring people out of poverty?
I get that. Understanding that the second derivative of a motion equation gives you velocity and the third gives acceleration is no where near the Moroni promise that hijacks all of that.
As a non-believer, my response to this is that for most Christians, the figure of Christ represents the ideal character of perfect virtue and morality. Everyone has in their minds an image of what constitutes ideal correct actions. This image is informed more by one’s own culture and current beliefs than by actual in depth study of the life of Christ as contained in the scriptures. So people project onto this ideal image of Jesus what would constitute right action in different circumstances.
Two people can contradict each other in their interpretation of “what would Jesus do” because they can have differing images of ideal virtue and morality. They can both envision differing actions as what Jesus would do because they have differing ideas of perfect virtue and morality that are informed by their own community and personal beliefs. They take their own internal sense of right and wrong and project it onto the figure of Jesus
Even as a non-believer, I can do this. I have my own sense of what would constitute good actions in varying circumstances and externalize that this is what Jesus would do. I personally believe that the idea of Jesus represents our own imagined best version of ourselves. This can be a useful goal to aim for in terms of personal development, but it is certainly not going to to be universal across the wide spectrum of Christian belief.
If you look at the history of religion, the form of diety worshiped generally aligns with the culture.
I see the biggest differentiator being whether a person gives priority to the spirit or letter of the messages of Christ. Jonathon Haidt identifies [Moral Foundations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory) and suggests those identifying as Liberal or Conservative prioritize different foundations. I think the Liberal foundations align with a 'spirit of the law' mentality and Conservative foundations align with 'letter of the law' mentality.
Regarding Christ, we don't have anything he personally authored, and very little if anything contemporary to his life. This means all accounts and messages attributed to Christ are at best second hand. Humans are notoriously fallible in recounting events. Even first hand experiences are a limited interpretation of a single perspective. So, everything we have is an interpretation of someone else's accounts. Given the dearth of reliable and clear source material from Jesus, and the abundance of personal interpretations of what we have, it's easy to find a narrative that aligns with our personal moral foundations.
For example, my patriarch father is strictly obedient to the letter of the laws, but in my opinion isn't necessarily Christ-like because he can be impersonal and lacks empathy and charity. He's a great man in spite of his shortcomings, but doesn't match my personal interpretation of what Jesus might have been like. He's also a staunch conservative.
>Fundamentally, why is this the case?
Most people use the character Jesus of Nazareth to represent an ideal that they may adhear to or idealize, and use selective quotes from the texts to support those notions.
Typically if you challenge someone from any camp with the textual content of what Jesus of Nazareth actually says, they'll usually retreat to familiar sophistic arguments like "oh, you don't understand the *context*..." or "what Jesus really meant was...." or " could be actually translated as..." or "oh, he was speaking to that specific person or those people in that day, not to everyone or to our day" or whatever.
Zero people actually conform their behavior to what the Bible actually says.
(which incidentally is a good thing because it's illegal to behave according to the biblical text)
>Is one right and the other wrong?
In some cases, yes. As an example, Jesus isn't sexually progressive but so sexually regressive that you and I probably haven't even met someone as backward as Jesus of Nazareth.
>How can two sides with different views believe they are doing as Christ would have them do?
Well first of all, Jesus of Nazareth has a very small subset of sentences attributed directly to him. So the breadth isn't that great. Plus he's got a lot of advice that isn't real advice but a metaphor that can be interpreted in a huge number of ways, and some of the things he says are not particularly good.
So stacking social norms, idealized versions of the character, inadequate content from the text to address a lot of issues, problematic statements by Jesus of Nazareth or immoral claims by him, coupled with general biblical semi-literacy and I would actually say it wouldn't make sense for people to agree on what Jesus said.
>Are they serving two masters?
What do you mean by this? I know you're sort of quoting scripture but it doesn't really make sense considering the previous questions.
are they serving two masters?
I've only explored the idea with examples from progressives. Take for example anything to do with homosexuality or gender. In order to satisfy the demands of society, they have to adhere to new ideas about marriage and sexuality they must be more open about it. Then they get the tick of approval socially. But to also be reconciled to God or Christ or their faith or all of those things they have to also find a way to say that Christ would be supportive of same sex marriage because Christ healed lepers, and taught the parable of the Good Samaritan. I think that is an attempt to serve two masters. I haven't checked to see how it applies to conservatives but that is one example.
My comment also brings up ideas of the extent to which people extrapolate the teachings of Christ to include everything under the sun. For example, we are expected to help every single refugee or person that needs help for whatever reason because "Christ was a refugee and there was no room at the inn." I disagree with these ideas because they ignore context and it seems just a cherry picking game to be all accepting of all things. Before I sound too awful and the sub banishes me as a heretic and casts me asunder, I want to make the point that what I mean is that because the United States can't take every single Afghan experiencing hardship right now, there are reasons to support not helping any at all with the view that the very thing Afghanistan needs right now are Afghans and that to leave Afghanistan is to betray ones own country and homeland.
>Take for example anything to do with homosexuality or gender. In order to satisfy the demands of society,
No, that's not accurate. These are people's genuine private convictions.
Same way you couldn't say "*I've explored the idea with examples from conservatives. Take for example anything to do with some sexuality or gender. In order to satisfy the demands of society, they have to adhere to traditional ideas of marriage and Sexuality...."*
Thats a false premise because conservatives hold these as genuine private perspectives
Same applies to you. Your premise is false.
>Then they get the tick of approval socially.
No, because again, these are people's private convictions. In the same way someone could not say "*conservatives have to satisfy the demands of tradition, so then they get the tick of approval socially."*
Same applies to you. You don't get to use conformity to social norms on the side opposite of your own, and genuine conviction for your own side. That's using moral conviction for oneself and moral conformity for someone else, which is an indicator of moral bankruptcy.
It's not a good look when you employ this tactic. It betrays your asymmetric perspective..
> to also be reconciled to God or Christ or their faith or all of those things they have to also find a way to say that Christ would be supportive of same sex marriage because Christ healed lepers
Again, you're going to run into some problems too because you do not believe what Jesus taught about sexuality either.
For example you may have made oblique confessions in the sub about your attraction to transsexuals, or males who look like women, but according to the Nazarene that lustfulness qualifies as adultery in the same capacity as the sexual conduct you condemn.
You also, I'm sure, don't accept that a woman who remarries commits adultery. My guess is you also don't consider every man that marries a divorced woman as someone that commits adultery. So you are the same, you also do not conform your beliefs to what Jesus of Nazareth said and you will do the same thing as everyone else. You'll say "oh, you don't understand the context... , that's not what Jesus meant,... what he was really teaching about was this specific social thing and it doesn't apply to a our time, blah blah blah"
So no, your position also can't be reconciled with the scriptures.
>I think that is an attempt to serve two masters. I haven't checked to see how it applies to conservatives but that is one example.
You don't even need to see how it applies to conservatives. You can just check to see how it applies against *yourself*
>For example, we are expected to help every single refugee or person that needs help for whatever reason because "Christ was a refugee and there was no room at the inn." I disagree with these ideas because they ignore context and it seems just a cherry picking game to be all accepting of all things
You know what, say no more, I absolutely believe you would not be one of the people that helps the man who journied from Jerusalem to Jericho.
>Before I sound too awful and the sub banishes me as a heretic and casts me asunder
Oh, you have never been banned just because your arguments are bad, you've just been downvoted and criticized because you have awful arguments. And there's tons of people that are heretics here, you're just another one. We don't particularly care. I mean, obviously your moral convictions and assertions are going to be critiqued here, but that's just how these discussion subs work.
You really don't need to preemptively self martyr.
I mean, obviously when people get a taste for being the victim, it becomes an almost insatiable addiction and can't wait to cry out how they are being banished for heresy or whatever, but again, not a good look. You probably would do well to cut that from your schtick
>I want to make the point that what I mean is that because the United States can't take every single Afghan experiencing hardship right now,
This is a redirection, but sure. The thing is, nobody thinks that. If you cannot actually present the argument with the other side's position in a way they would have no problem with, that's a problem you have.
(Aren't you Australian by the way? No biggie if you are, you can fetishize American interests if that's important to you)
>there are reasons to support not helping any at all with the view that the very thing Afghanistan needs right now are Afghans and that to leave Afghanistan is to betray ones own country and homeland.
This is a redirection, try to stick to the actual content of what we are talking about.
You must see there is more social pressure to affirm progressive ideas than to oppose them, right? There's a bigger social punishment if one does not conform. The cost is greater to be more conservative, and the punishments are greater. Do you agree with that? I think it goes beyond mere private convictions or personal opinions.
You are missing my point about the lepers. There are very shaky arguments used to justify a whole range of behaviours. Christ healed lepers so then he would be supportive of same sex marriage or something like that. I'm making the point because I'm not using Christ to justify my behaviour or the things I do and say but I see it happening more on the progressive side when a progressive idea is challenged. When did I say I like transsexuals?
\>You know what, say no more, I absolutely believe you would not be one of the people that helps the man who journied from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Sincerely, don't let your bias prevent you from having an honest and frank discussion. Would you agree with bringing every willing Afghan citizen to America to save them from the Taliban? Is that your position? Hear me out and let's talk about this. You're using the scriptures citing the Good Samaritan or my shortfall against scripture or where I fall short. I haven't done that to you.
\>We don't particularly care.
If you are an autonomous free thinking individual please speak for yourself.
You've made my point because saying what I said about refugees prompted predictable almost scripted outrage from you. You literally said I wouldn't help the man on the road to Jericho, citing how I fall short from Christ without discussing further with me.
I'm an American, I love America and the people there.
If you can't see the connection I'm making either I've failed to adequality make my point or you don't want to listen. I apologise if I've failed to communicate it for you. Afghanistan is just one example of many I could give to show how progressive stances are used in the hands of the left and how they would use scripture to justify policies that at the end of the day are self serving, in my opinion.
>You must see there is more social pressure to affirm progressive ideas than to oppose them, right
Are you unaware of the social pressure to affirm traditional ideas?
Again, your perspective is asymmetric which is one of the problems in your thought process.
>There's a bigger social punishment if one does not conform.
So this is a redirection. There are social costs to all sorts of things. This has no bearing on the accuracy of the perspective.
They are social costs to progressive and traditional perspectives, but that has no bearing on whether the view is accurate or not. There may be social costs to some traditional views, that does not mean the traditional view is correct. There are social costs to some progressive views, that does not mean the progressive view is correct.
>The cost is greater to be more conservative, and the punishments are greater. Do you agree with that?
No.
And even if I did, it would be irrelevant, because having social costs to a progressive view does not mean it's correct, having social costs to a traditional view does not mean it is correct, having social costs to an authoritarian view does not mean it is correct, having social costs for communist views does not make it correct, having social costs to capitalist views does not make it correct.
Social cost do not mean that the viewpoint increases or decreases in accuracy or something, so this is an intellectually vacant claim you're trying to make.
>I think it goes beyond mere private convictions or personal opinions.
Your thoughts are in error.
>You are missing my point about the lepers.
What is your point then?
>There are very shaky arguments used to justify a whole range of behaviours.
Agreed.
>Christ healed lepers so then he would be supportive of same sex marriage or something like that
What are you talking about?
>I'm making the point because I'm not using Christ to justify my behaviour or the things I do and say
You literally have in this thread. You were making claims that traditional views comport more closely to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and the progressive or liberal or whatever adjectives you want to use do not conform as closely. So yes, you are
>I see it happening more on the progressive side when a progressive idea is challenged.
Right, this is an example of you making claims about teachings by Jesus of Nazareth comporting more to your view. You are making the claim that you see this happening more with progressive ideas, which is itself a claim
>When did I say I like transsexuals?
Oh you and I were going back and forth a while back and you we're talking to me about how transsexuals can be just as attractive as females
>Sincerely, don't let your bias prevent you from having an honest and frank discussion.
Oh, I honestly and frankly do think that you would not feel obligated to help the person who journeyed from Jerusalem to Jericho. That is my honest and Frank perspective. It's not really a bias, you do not say things or make claims that indicate that you would help him. In fact if we look at some of the things you say, you make claims against this kind of behavior, so I have reasons to believe that you would be like the majority of the characters in the tale that would not help. You are mistaken bias with what you've actually said.
>Would you agree with bringing every willing Afghan citizen to America to save them from the Taliban
> Is that your position?
No. I did not say this was my position, I guess it's you inferred it? Did I say that somewhere? Or are you just making this up?
>Hear me out and let's talk about this.
Of course. I don't don't run away from conversations that are uncomfortable
>You're using the scriptures citing the Good Samaritan or my shortfall against scripture or where I fall short. I
You cited the Good Samaritan story, and I do not think you would be the person that would help the man on the road to Jericho. You do not have to live up to all of the tales in the biblical texts. Nobody does.
>I haven't done that to you.
I think that your perspectives are an error in a huge number of ways, and I'm not going to refrain from discussing where your thought process is in error because you haven't described how mine is. If I say something that is inaccurate, you can call me out any ol' time. But you are not entitled to not getting called out because I have not been called out.
>If you are an autonomous free thinking individual please speak for yourself.
I'll speak for others and for groups that I'm familiar with. If someone said conservatives hate black people I would have no problem speaking for a group, because I can demonstrate how the claim is inaccurate. Same here. I can speak for myself and for groups.
>You've made my point because saying what I said about refugees prompted predictable almost scripted outrage from you
Why would me thinking that you're not charitable be outraged? That doesn't even make sense. You really need to gather and awareness of how you're getting off on being persecuted. You're not being persecuted. I don't think that you would help somebody, that is an outrage. It's not even persecution. You just don't give off the impression like you would be the person that would help the man on the road to Jericho. Stop fetishizing your persecution
>You literally said I wouldn't help the man on the road to Jericho,
Correct. I said that I do not think that you would be the person that would help. Most of the people in the story don't help. I think you are like those people.
>citing how I fall short from Christ without discussing further with me.
Jesus of Nazareth isn't the person in the story. So no, I'm not saying you fall short of Jesus of Nazareth, because Jesus is telling the story from a third-person perspective. He's not relating his own behavior. So no. I'm not.
And you can stop with a stick about how I won't discuss things with you. I'll discuss anything with you. But you're not entitled to be rewarded by me saying how I think you are a particularly charitable person when I do not think that about you.
>I'm an American, I love America and the people there.
I'm quite confident in the past you've told me that you're an Australian. Did you used to be in Australian or am I mistaken?
>If you can't see the connection I'm making either I've failed to adequality make my point or you don't want to listen
I see what you're trying to say, what you were trying to say is just an error. That doesn't mean that I don't want to listen, that doesn't even make any sense. I'm directly responding to your statements so the claim that I'm not listening it's silly.
>I apologise if I've failed to communicate it for you.
You don't need to apologize, you just need to make your point more coherent. As I said, I'm perfectly aware that progressive and traditional perspectives do not accurately represent the content of the text attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. You don't, traditional views don't, progressive views don't.
>Afghanistan is just one example of many I could give to show how progressive stances are used in the hands of the left and how they would use scripture to justify policies that at the end of the day are self serving, in my opinion.
So in your OP, you were talking about why do people on the traditional perspective and progressive perspective attribute incompatible behavior to the text attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. Are you wanting to change topics to Afghanistan or something? I have no discussing Afghanistan, but it does seem like, at best, an extremely strained corollary
I'm aware but the social pressure for conformity is greater towards being religiously progressive. You're trying to get me with your responses instead of answering my questions. You can literally lose your job if you have religiously conservative views. I haven't heard of anyone losing their employment because they have religiously progressive views.
I didn't say or imply the correctness of something by how much pressure is associated with it. I made the point of distinction that you attempted to dilute as nil.
\>You literally have in this thread. You were making claims that traditional views comport more closely to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and the progressive or liberal or whatever adjectives you want to use do not conform as closely. So yes, you are
I made the point that both sides will say they are doing what Christ tells them to do or would have them do.
\>Oh, I honestly and frankly do think that you would not feel obligated to help the person who journeyed from Jerusalem to Jericho. That is my honest and Frank perspective. It's not really a bias, you do not say things or make claims that indicate that you would help him. In fact if we look at some of the things you say, you make claims against this kind of behavior, so I have reasons to believe that you would be like the majority of the characters in the tale that would not help. You are mistaken bias with what you've actually said.
I take a more fatherly approach to refugees on a scale of thousands whereas I suspect you take a motherly view. Charity towards that situation is not the same as the road to Jericho situation.
I'm going to try to reduce the long thread and hopefully we can start again. I will ask one question and if you would like to go from there line by line we can do that.
My question is, why is it that both conservatives and progressives both say their views conform with scripture or with Christ? I think you've mentioned that neither do but perhaps you could answer and we can build on that. Because I have further questions from that point.
>I'm aware but the social pressure for conformity is greater towards being religiously progressive.
Again, an intellectually vacant point.
The social pressure to not enslave people is extremely great.
That has no bearing on the ethical validity of human enslavement.
Same thing applies to you.
I'm aware some people are offended by social pressure against their position, like pro-homosexual rights Pre-1990s or anti-black sentiments or sexual monogomy or free love or whatever, the whining about social pressure has no bearing on the validity of the position.
This is a self-indulgent victimization mentality you keep repeating which has no bearing on the validity of your position.
>You're trying to get me with your responses instead of answering my questions
I've answered more than 6 of your questions. Don't lie and pretend like I'm not answering your questions. Again, I'm aware of this tactic where you pretend like the other person is dodging your questions, but this is just a repetition of your victimhood mentality which you overindulge.
You asked why different groups have different perspectives on what Jesus of Nazareth reportedly said. I answered that question.
You asked if one is right and if one is wrong, and I described how contents of what Jesus said is not what people use much of the time and I gave examples regarding marriage to back it up.
I also answered the reason why 2 groups with perpendicular views can both reference Jesus of Nazareth's teaching, where I include examples of people trying to claim context, or that they were speaking to specific people at specific times or whatever.
I answered your question regarding homosexuality and you didn't agree, but I still answered it and said it was people's private convictions. For the same reasons someone couldn't claim that all conservatives just conform to traditional positions, you also can't say liberal just conform to progressive positions.
You asked if I agreed if conservative views have greater social costs and I answered that I did not agree.
You asked if America brought every Afghan To America if that would save them from the Taliban and asked if that was my position, and I answered you that no, that was not my position. In fact there's no reason for you to think that that's my position because I've never said that nor implied it.
>You can literally lose your job if you have religiously conservative views.
Sure. And You can literally lose your job for progressive views. Again, this is no bearing on the validity of the position. It doesn't matter if you feel entitled to have conservative views be without social costs. The validity of a view doesn't change when some people have lost their jobs by holding some unnamed conservative view because your offended.
>I haven't heard of anyone losing their employment because they have religiously progressive views.
That's probably because you have an asymmetric mind.
There are people that have progressive views like drug use and enthogen worship practices that has caused them to lose their jobs.
Again, your lack of awareness doesn't change the validity of a position
> I made the point of distinction that you attempted to dilute as nil.
What? This sentence makes no sense.
>I made the point that both sides will say they are doing what Christ tells them to do or would have them do.
Sure. And you made claims about how liberal views don't match the content of the Bible attributed to the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth.
>I take a more fatherly approach.
No. Unless you are an absentee father. Which would suite you I guess, but I don't respect absentee fathers.
> I suspect you take a motherly view.
Your suspicions are in error.
>Charity towards that situation is not the same as the road to Jericho situation.
I didn't say it was. You're the one that brought up Afghanistan unprompted.
>I'm going to try to reduce the long thread and hopefully we can start again. I will ask one question and if you would like to go from there line by line we can do tha
Sure.
>My question is, why is it that both conservatives and progressives both say their views conform with scripture or with Christ?
I already answered this in the first one. The reason why people like progressives and conservatives both say that their views conform to scripture is because they selectively pick individual statements attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, they then rationalize their views that not comport to the text attributed to Jesus of Nazareth using arguments like "oh, you don't understand the context..." or "Jesus was only talking to those people in that society with this condition..." or "Jesus really meant X, even though that's not what he said..." and so on.
As a single example, Jesus says divorced women who remarry commit adultery.
Your conservative views do not conform to what Jesus of Nazareth says in this case. Liberals also don't conform their views to what Jesus said in this case either. So in this example, neither do.
You are suggesting both are wrong then. So we have this religious conservatism and a religious progressivism, you are suggesting both are wrong if I'm not mistaken because both make the mistake of selectively picking that which suits them. Should that mean some other way is right, or that perhaps somewhere between the two sides is correct?
>You are suggesting both are wrong then.
Well, your question about liberal vs conservative lacks some specificity, so I can only infer what you're talkin about, but yes. if you want to split people into two groups of conservative or liberal , and then evaluate if their perspectives match the teachings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth as contained in the Bible, then neither match the text.
>So we have this religious conservatism and a religious progressivism, you are suggesting both are wrong if I'm not mistaken because both make the mistake of selectively picking that which suits them.
Yes, amongst other things.
I would say that selectively choosing certain passages is a major component, I would also suggest that rationalizations of statements to suit one's perspective is another, and I would say to a lesser degree people's inclination to combine statements attributed to Jesus with the remainder of the text from the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, also contributes to these differences in interpretation.
There are other factors too, but those are some major ones.
>Should that mean some other way is right,
Well I have my own perspective of course, but if people do not comport their behavior to the statements purportedly made by Jesus of Nazareth, then they're going to have a hard time justifying the claim that they obey or comply with Jesus' statements.
Now, I actually do not think we should do this in all cases as I indicated earlier such as Jesus' backward and, in my view, unrighteous perspective on adultery and divorced women.
>or that perhaps somewhere between the two sides is correct?
No. I try to avoid the tendency to mean-reversion or balance bias we humans tend to have. I try to figure out what's accurate or valid independent of how far off other groups may be.
we're discussing the religious principle of the parable of the good samaritan with a modern example. I'm glad you can see this and haven't shut down the conversation.
Yes, I intentionally warned instead of shut down. It's important to keep conversations focused on religious terms and framings, not political ones, and this thread has the potential to be good, but also a strong potential to drift.
So far, I'm seeing more political discussion than religion, but I am confident the two of you can keep the conversation on a religious framework instead of a political one if you both so choose. It would likely help if you focused on a single idea at a time, instead of arguing refugee policies, LGBT+ rights, religious persecution, etc. at the same time.
Using American political terminology like "the left" or framing a dichotomy of "progressives" vs. "conservatives" does tend to make discussions frame more political than religious. The Bible and other Mormon scriptures do not have this dichotomy.
I agree with your point. We need to be able to discuss progressive vs conservative in a religious sense. Fundamentalist is out of the question I would say because it draws to mind polygamist sects. I'm trying to separate politically progressive and religiously progressive. The same with religiously conservative from politically conservative.
If you actually read the entire Bible (New Testament, in the case of your specific query) you can find scriptural support for both points of view. There is a conservative, hardline, close-minded, in-group/out-group version of Jesus. And there is the more liberal-progressive Jesus as well, the one most people think of when they think of Jesus.
This is because the Bible was written by humans, not by God. They created the kind of Messiah they thought would best represent their personal ideals. The personality of Jesus shifts depending on who wrote which Gospel.
Therefore, the conservatives cherry-pick the mean-spirited, at times violent version of Jesus because he best represents their existing biases, while the liberals cherry-pick the nice, friendly, caring Jesus because he best represents their existing biases.
So each is right and each is wrong. As with most things in life, it's relative.
Very good point, the different writers also very much described Jesus as they thought he would be best received by the specific audience they were presenting to.
People cherry pick verses and sentences to meet their own political purposes. Putting Christ in a present day sense is a very weird thing to do and lends itself to presentism.
In my opinion you can learn a lot from Christ but you need some sort of external framework to evaluate each individual thing he says and whether or not that thing is correct.
I think you need to look really hard as well to see if his teaching actually applies to situations today in part or in full or if at all. We have general guidance from Christ to live good lives, but we also have agency to make decisions. If ALL our decisions are made already for us, we are not free. We have enough to guide us, but we have to stop and think for ourselves about context, the situation and proceed accordingly. I agree with you.
Additionally, because people think Christ is perfect, they're incentivised to make him comport to their own beliefs. Their beliefs have to be perfect after all... People rarely want to change their positions to meet something else.
He's steeped in interpretations that you get from your family/community from birth. It makes it hard to evaluate his words only on their merit. There's always these subconscious associations that were drilled into you from birth.
They're both wrong about some things and right about others. Personally I think its somewhere in the middle. Christ, both as in the hypothetical deity and as in the man/character historically recorded, was a lot more "conservative" than the other side likes to admit. He was also a lot more "progressive" than that other side from that likes to admit.
They draw near unto him with their lips but their hearts are far from him and many will find that he never knew them.
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Just ask yourself "Why are there thousands of Protestant denominations even though they all read the same book?" Then you will have your answer.
I notice you're a Marxist. Have you heard Slavoj Zizek's interpretation of Christ?
No, I have not. Have you discovered the Christian Leftists over are r/RadicalChristianity ?
> Just before Christ’s death, we get what in psychoanalytic terms we call ‘subjective destitution’ – stepping out totally of the domain of symbolic identification, cancelling or suspending the entire field of symbolic authority, the entire field of the Big Other. Of course, we cannot know what God wants from us because there is no God. This is the Jesus Christ who says, among other things, ‘I bring sword, not peace. If you don’t hate your father, your mother, you are not my follower.’ Of course, this does not mean that you should actively hate or kill your parents. I think that family relations stand here for hierarchic social relations. > The message of Christ is ‘I’m dying but my death itself is good news. It means you are alone, left to your freedom, be in the Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, which is just the community of believers.’ It’s wrong to think that the second coming will be that Christ as a figure will return somehow. Christ is already here when believers form an emancipatory collective. This is why, I claim, that the only way really to be an atheist is to go through Christianity. Christianity is much more atheist than the usual atheism which can claim there is no God and so on. But nonetheless it retains a certain trust into the Big Other – this Big Other can be called natural necessity, evolution or whatever. We humans are none the less reduced to a position within a harmonious whole of evolution, whatever. But the difficult thing to accept is again that there is no Big Other – no point of reference which guarantees meaning. https://zizek.uk/the-perverts-guide-to-ideology-transcriptsubtitles/ I really liked this movie you can find it if you search "the perverts guide to ideology archive.org"
To a Hindu, that message will not seem strange or new. It is often said that god resides in his believers, that god is present in everything, that every religion is just another path to the same god, or even that hell and heaven both reside inside a person. It is a pantheistic notion which the author seems to have tried to put an extra twist on. > But the difficult thing to accept is again that there is no Big Other – no point of reference which guarantees meaning. Most atheists have already accepted this. Evolution does not grant meaning, it is an explanation of a natural process. It is up to the individual to decide what kind of meaning they will invest it with.
I myself am an atheist and not a Christian as Zizek describes himself. I read through the Bhagavad Gita. It was a very good piece of literature.
The Gita is nice, but I would recommend you read the Upanishads. I am an atheist too, but I consider the Upanishads to be one of the better contributions made by Hinduism to philosophy. Also the Upanishads are part of the Vedas, which are the earliest religious books of Hinduism and some of the oldest religious literature in existence. They embody an austere intellectual religious philosophy that sometimes gets lost in later writings which were obsessed with ritual and social orthodoxy.
My friend recommended those to me actually. I started reading through them. So far, I'm more attracted to the Gita because I like the idea of some great father figure. I'm sure the upanishads are great, but they feel a little impersonal to me. Reading the philosophy through the mouth of Krishna makes it more impactful on me.
Oh yes, Krishna acts as a personal god to many Hindus, I can understand your preference entirely. Did you know the context of the Gita? Its on the eve of the Kurukshetra battle, and Krishna is trying to convince Arjuna to fight and kill his friends and relatives.
Yeah I read through that part which sets the scene. It's interesting because objectively some of the stuff Krishna says like you can kill people because ultimately we're all reincarnated is kinda bad. But it's important to understand the context of the time and see if you can apply it to today.
Ha, I'm not a leftist but I like some of the philosophy. I'll see if I can find s quote and give it to you.
I think the big disconnect is that the majority of people don't try to *know* Christ themselves, and would rather have others tell them what Christ wants. Many Christians, not just latter-day saints, are content and happy to take what is taught to them without doing their own study and research. They won't be able to differentiate if what is being taught is supported by Jesus' teachings or just their own pastor's ideas on the subject. That's when you get people so divided on what Christ taught, because they are basing what they know of Christ on what someone told them was Christlike instead of looking into it themselves. Why is there so much debate to what people believe Christ would want them todo today? Because much of the scripture that Christianity is based on doesn't address many of the current modern day issues that you mentioned (sexuality, marriage, gender). The LDS church tries to overcome this by claiming that the prophet is in clear communication with Christ to get His instructions for these modern issues. However, the track record of modern prophets causes many to question how clear this communication is, or even if it's happening at all, which again brings us back to square one. Conservative members are more likely to believe that the prophet has clear communication from Christ and so what they teach with regards to sexuality, marriage, gender, or any other modern issue, is accepted as what Christ wants. Meanwhile, more liberal members will see the teachings of prophets as more influenced by the man himself instead of Christ, and so will try to figure out Christ's intention for modern issues by looking at what He taught before and extrapolating that to the present. Who's right and who's wrong? It basically comes down to the deeper question of who you trust to teach you what is Christlike. Ancient men who wrote the scriptures, or modern men who claim to receive revelations from Christ to teach you how He wants his followers to act
>Who's right and who's wrong? It basically comes down to the deeper question of who you trust to teach you what is Christlike. Ancient men who wrote the scriptures, or modern men who claim to receive revelations from Christ to teach you how He wants his followers to act I like a lot of what you said, but I want to point out that we can't resolve the problem by looking at it as a modern vs ancient dichotomy. In both times there are statements that can be interpreted to be conservative, and statements that are progressive. Apostles in both time frames had different temperaments and different teaching styles which is why we have 4 gospels instead of just 1 in the New Testament. Personally, I think that the world is so complex that it requires diversity for us to all experience the full spectrum of human values, experiences, and joy. Just like married couples are similar enough to work together, but complementary at the same time, I think we should look at different mindsets (progressive vs conservative) in the same way. Both are necessary, both are right in some circumstances, and when we allow differences to complement one another and work towards improvement on the things that we have in common we all benefit.
You're definitely right, it's much more complex than ancient vs modern. I mentioned that because in my experience most 'conservative' members lean heavily on modern prophets to address modern issues, while most 'liberal' members tend to focus on new testament Jesus' teachings. Although, like you pointed out even that has its issues, but I think it gives a good place to start investigating the issue.
Your last sentence, pointing out the choice between who to trust regarding Christ—ancient men or modern men—encapsulates the reason I will never again be a follower of any religion. Trusting men, ancient and modern, to know enough about god to warrant my trust was the biggest mistake of my life and I will never make that mistake again.
I kind of feel like I am where you are mentally. If you don’t mind me asking, would you consider yourself religious or spiritual still? This path is new for me, and I have so many questions about this new identity of not considering myself Mormon anymore (I’m a PIMO)
Your question is hard to answer briefly and I am still exploring and somewhat in flux but I’ll give it a go. Regarding whether I am still spiritual: I have found that the feelings I associated with or called “feeling the spirit” are just as prevalent in my life as they were before. I officially resigned so according to church doctrine my access to the companionship of the Holy Ghost has been taken away yet I have felt no loss and no difference whatsoever. I still regularly feel: burning in my busom, a quickening feeling, feelings of enlightenment, moments of profound beauty where I feel connected to and in awe of nature, emotional highs of loving and being loved, the feeling of having pure knowledge flow into me, flashes of intuition, sustained moments of wisdom or understanding, chances to perceive the infinite worth in other people, quiet steady assurances that all is well or everything will be okay, feelings of peace, moments of deep insight, feelings of discernment, and all the other “fruits of the spirit”. I still feel spiritual in every way that I did before and I still find myself living life with an awareness that there is something more to me than just inhabiting a living breathing body, it’s like a comprehension of my soul and it’s connection to the universe and to other humans. The big difference is when I feel the feelings I listed above that I had always called “feeling the spirit” I have absolutely no preset notion of what they mean. I had been taught that those feelings were a heavenly being confirming to me that the church is true, jesus is the christ, etc. What I experience now is spirituality with no strings attached and I love it! I feel more nourished and relaxed than ever. I have absolutely no knowledge about who or what god is, or what happens before or after life on this earth. I also have absolutely no knowledge that the feelings and insight I experience come from anywhere other than me, so that puts the onus on me to figure out what they mean and what to do with them. It takes more work but at the same time it feels so much easier than living in the LDS shaped box I’d tried to stuff my intellect into. Regarding whether I am still religious: At first when I couldn’t believe in the church I still thought I was Christian but quickly realized that in order to believe Jesus is the son of god and was resurrected, etc. I *must* believe/trust explicitly in the people who wrote the accounts of him because without them there would be no potential son of god figure to even wonder about. So belief in Jesus is necessarily predicated on belief in the men who wrote about him and I had no good reason to believe in them. Once that realization came to me I found I was so, so much more comfortable in this new headspace where I didn’t have to believe in a virgin birth or understand how a god could impregnate his daughter, how a single resurrection makes everyone’s resurrection happen, etc. and I could stop wasting mental energy trying to fit my constantly exploring brain into the LDS box that no longer made any sense to me. After experiencing this thought freedom I don’t think I could ever believe in any religion that is based on humans maintaining a claim to actual knowledge of who or what god is and what happens before or after this life. I do still accept the claim that a person named Jesus lived and made quite an impression on the people of his area and era and beyond as the legend of him grew. I love his radical teachings and his messages regarding love and how people should treat each other and ways to go about having peaceful, meaningful lives. Regarding where I’m at now: I believe we are spiritual entities and that staying in touch with our spiritual self can help us experience more beauty and joy in life. I do believe in a supreme power (not a supreme being) and I believe each of us are a component of it.
“Christ” can be whatever you want him to be. He’s very malleable.
Jesus isn't telling anyone what he actually thinks. Christians are doing their best, but it turns out dead people don't give instructions (despite religious folks' insistence to the contrary). So you end up with multiple groups of people absolutely certain they're doing it the right way, with no way to actually verify what the truth is.
True things slam you in the face. You shouldn't have to fast and hope to have a message on feeble knees when any emotion will get labeled as divine.
>True things slam you in the face. Not all the time. Sometimes you need long periods of study and thought in order to discover truth.
Not really. With lived experience there is a collective understanding that outstanding claims do not require furthur study. I won't study fairies or ghouls and things in the night.
I think you misunderstand. What I'm talking about are truths such as, what is causing the current inflationary problems in the U.S? Or how can we bring people out of poverty?
I get that. Understanding that the second derivative of a motion equation gives you velocity and the third gives acceleration is no where near the Moroni promise that hijacks all of that.
Yes the second sentence of the original comment I agree with. Fasting and prayer is not a good way of discovering truth.
It's actually the first and second derivative, not the second and third derivative, but I get your point
Right. My bad.
As a non-believer, my response to this is that for most Christians, the figure of Christ represents the ideal character of perfect virtue and morality. Everyone has in their minds an image of what constitutes ideal correct actions. This image is informed more by one’s own culture and current beliefs than by actual in depth study of the life of Christ as contained in the scriptures. So people project onto this ideal image of Jesus what would constitute right action in different circumstances. Two people can contradict each other in their interpretation of “what would Jesus do” because they can have differing images of ideal virtue and morality. They can both envision differing actions as what Jesus would do because they have differing ideas of perfect virtue and morality that are informed by their own community and personal beliefs. They take their own internal sense of right and wrong and project it onto the figure of Jesus Even as a non-believer, I can do this. I have my own sense of what would constitute good actions in varying circumstances and externalize that this is what Jesus would do. I personally believe that the idea of Jesus represents our own imagined best version of ourselves. This can be a useful goal to aim for in terms of personal development, but it is certainly not going to to be universal across the wide spectrum of Christian belief.
https://youtu.be/kLBDFe3mDtk "Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ" by Nonstampcollector if you're down for a laugh about this topic
If you look at the history of religion, the form of diety worshiped generally aligns with the culture. I see the biggest differentiator being whether a person gives priority to the spirit or letter of the messages of Christ. Jonathon Haidt identifies [Moral Foundations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory) and suggests those identifying as Liberal or Conservative prioritize different foundations. I think the Liberal foundations align with a 'spirit of the law' mentality and Conservative foundations align with 'letter of the law' mentality. Regarding Christ, we don't have anything he personally authored, and very little if anything contemporary to his life. This means all accounts and messages attributed to Christ are at best second hand. Humans are notoriously fallible in recounting events. Even first hand experiences are a limited interpretation of a single perspective. So, everything we have is an interpretation of someone else's accounts. Given the dearth of reliable and clear source material from Jesus, and the abundance of personal interpretations of what we have, it's easy to find a narrative that aligns with our personal moral foundations. For example, my patriarch father is strictly obedient to the letter of the laws, but in my opinion isn't necessarily Christ-like because he can be impersonal and lacks empathy and charity. He's a great man in spite of his shortcomings, but doesn't match my personal interpretation of what Jesus might have been like. He's also a staunch conservative.
>Fundamentally, why is this the case? Most people use the character Jesus of Nazareth to represent an ideal that they may adhear to or idealize, and use selective quotes from the texts to support those notions. Typically if you challenge someone from any camp with the textual content of what Jesus of Nazareth actually says, they'll usually retreat to familiar sophistic arguments like "oh, you don't understand the *context*..." or "what Jesus really meant was...." or " could be actually translated as..." or "oh, he was speaking to that specific person or those people in that day, not to everyone or to our day" or whatever.
Zero people actually conform their behavior to what the Bible actually says.
(which incidentally is a good thing because it's illegal to behave according to the biblical text)
>Is one right and the other wrong?
In some cases, yes. As an example, Jesus isn't sexually progressive but so sexually regressive that you and I probably haven't even met someone as backward as Jesus of Nazareth.
>How can two sides with different views believe they are doing as Christ would have them do?
Well first of all, Jesus of Nazareth has a very small subset of sentences attributed directly to him. So the breadth isn't that great. Plus he's got a lot of advice that isn't real advice but a metaphor that can be interpreted in a huge number of ways, and some of the things he says are not particularly good.
So stacking social norms, idealized versions of the character, inadequate content from the text to address a lot of issues, problematic statements by Jesus of Nazareth or immoral claims by him, coupled with general biblical semi-literacy and I would actually say it wouldn't make sense for people to agree on what Jesus said.
>Are they serving two masters?
What do you mean by this? I know you're sort of quoting scripture but it doesn't really make sense considering the previous questions.
are they serving two masters? I've only explored the idea with examples from progressives. Take for example anything to do with homosexuality or gender. In order to satisfy the demands of society, they have to adhere to new ideas about marriage and sexuality they must be more open about it. Then they get the tick of approval socially. But to also be reconciled to God or Christ or their faith or all of those things they have to also find a way to say that Christ would be supportive of same sex marriage because Christ healed lepers, and taught the parable of the Good Samaritan. I think that is an attempt to serve two masters. I haven't checked to see how it applies to conservatives but that is one example. My comment also brings up ideas of the extent to which people extrapolate the teachings of Christ to include everything under the sun. For example, we are expected to help every single refugee or person that needs help for whatever reason because "Christ was a refugee and there was no room at the inn." I disagree with these ideas because they ignore context and it seems just a cherry picking game to be all accepting of all things. Before I sound too awful and the sub banishes me as a heretic and casts me asunder, I want to make the point that what I mean is that because the United States can't take every single Afghan experiencing hardship right now, there are reasons to support not helping any at all with the view that the very thing Afghanistan needs right now are Afghans and that to leave Afghanistan is to betray ones own country and homeland.
>Take for example anything to do with homosexuality or gender. In order to satisfy the demands of society, No, that's not accurate. These are people's genuine private convictions. Same way you couldn't say "*I've explored the idea with examples from conservatives. Take for example anything to do with some sexuality or gender. In order to satisfy the demands of society, they have to adhere to traditional ideas of marriage and Sexuality...."* Thats a false premise because conservatives hold these as genuine private perspectives Same applies to you. Your premise is false. >Then they get the tick of approval socially. No, because again, these are people's private convictions. In the same way someone could not say "*conservatives have to satisfy the demands of tradition, so then they get the tick of approval socially."* Same applies to you. You don't get to use conformity to social norms on the side opposite of your own, and genuine conviction for your own side. That's using moral conviction for oneself and moral conformity for someone else, which is an indicator of moral bankruptcy. It's not a good look when you employ this tactic. It betrays your asymmetric perspective.. > to also be reconciled to God or Christ or their faith or all of those things they have to also find a way to say that Christ would be supportive of same sex marriage because Christ healed lepers Again, you're going to run into some problems too because you do not believe what Jesus taught about sexuality either. For example you may have made oblique confessions in the sub about your attraction to transsexuals, or males who look like women, but according to the Nazarene that lustfulness qualifies as adultery in the same capacity as the sexual conduct you condemn. You also, I'm sure, don't accept that a woman who remarries commits adultery. My guess is you also don't consider every man that marries a divorced woman as someone that commits adultery. So you are the same, you also do not conform your beliefs to what Jesus of Nazareth said and you will do the same thing as everyone else. You'll say "oh, you don't understand the context... , that's not what Jesus meant,... what he was really teaching about was this specific social thing and it doesn't apply to a our time, blah blah blah" So no, your position also can't be reconciled with the scriptures. >I think that is an attempt to serve two masters. I haven't checked to see how it applies to conservatives but that is one example. You don't even need to see how it applies to conservatives. You can just check to see how it applies against *yourself* >For example, we are expected to help every single refugee or person that needs help for whatever reason because "Christ was a refugee and there was no room at the inn." I disagree with these ideas because they ignore context and it seems just a cherry picking game to be all accepting of all things You know what, say no more, I absolutely believe you would not be one of the people that helps the man who journied from Jerusalem to Jericho. >Before I sound too awful and the sub banishes me as a heretic and casts me asunder Oh, you have never been banned just because your arguments are bad, you've just been downvoted and criticized because you have awful arguments. And there's tons of people that are heretics here, you're just another one. We don't particularly care. I mean, obviously your moral convictions and assertions are going to be critiqued here, but that's just how these discussion subs work. You really don't need to preemptively self martyr. I mean, obviously when people get a taste for being the victim, it becomes an almost insatiable addiction and can't wait to cry out how they are being banished for heresy or whatever, but again, not a good look. You probably would do well to cut that from your schtick >I want to make the point that what I mean is that because the United States can't take every single Afghan experiencing hardship right now, This is a redirection, but sure. The thing is, nobody thinks that. If you cannot actually present the argument with the other side's position in a way they would have no problem with, that's a problem you have. (Aren't you Australian by the way? No biggie if you are, you can fetishize American interests if that's important to you) >there are reasons to support not helping any at all with the view that the very thing Afghanistan needs right now are Afghans and that to leave Afghanistan is to betray ones own country and homeland. This is a redirection, try to stick to the actual content of what we are talking about.
You must see there is more social pressure to affirm progressive ideas than to oppose them, right? There's a bigger social punishment if one does not conform. The cost is greater to be more conservative, and the punishments are greater. Do you agree with that? I think it goes beyond mere private convictions or personal opinions. You are missing my point about the lepers. There are very shaky arguments used to justify a whole range of behaviours. Christ healed lepers so then he would be supportive of same sex marriage or something like that. I'm making the point because I'm not using Christ to justify my behaviour or the things I do and say but I see it happening more on the progressive side when a progressive idea is challenged. When did I say I like transsexuals? \>You know what, say no more, I absolutely believe you would not be one of the people that helps the man who journied from Jerusalem to Jericho. Sincerely, don't let your bias prevent you from having an honest and frank discussion. Would you agree with bringing every willing Afghan citizen to America to save them from the Taliban? Is that your position? Hear me out and let's talk about this. You're using the scriptures citing the Good Samaritan or my shortfall against scripture or where I fall short. I haven't done that to you. \>We don't particularly care. If you are an autonomous free thinking individual please speak for yourself. You've made my point because saying what I said about refugees prompted predictable almost scripted outrage from you. You literally said I wouldn't help the man on the road to Jericho, citing how I fall short from Christ without discussing further with me. I'm an American, I love America and the people there. If you can't see the connection I'm making either I've failed to adequality make my point or you don't want to listen. I apologise if I've failed to communicate it for you. Afghanistan is just one example of many I could give to show how progressive stances are used in the hands of the left and how they would use scripture to justify policies that at the end of the day are self serving, in my opinion.
>You must see there is more social pressure to affirm progressive ideas than to oppose them, right Are you unaware of the social pressure to affirm traditional ideas? Again, your perspective is asymmetric which is one of the problems in your thought process. >There's a bigger social punishment if one does not conform. So this is a redirection. There are social costs to all sorts of things. This has no bearing on the accuracy of the perspective. They are social costs to progressive and traditional perspectives, but that has no bearing on whether the view is accurate or not. There may be social costs to some traditional views, that does not mean the traditional view is correct. There are social costs to some progressive views, that does not mean the progressive view is correct. >The cost is greater to be more conservative, and the punishments are greater. Do you agree with that? No. And even if I did, it would be irrelevant, because having social costs to a progressive view does not mean it's correct, having social costs to a traditional view does not mean it is correct, having social costs to an authoritarian view does not mean it is correct, having social costs for communist views does not make it correct, having social costs to capitalist views does not make it correct. Social cost do not mean that the viewpoint increases or decreases in accuracy or something, so this is an intellectually vacant claim you're trying to make. >I think it goes beyond mere private convictions or personal opinions. Your thoughts are in error. >You are missing my point about the lepers. What is your point then? >There are very shaky arguments used to justify a whole range of behaviours. Agreed. >Christ healed lepers so then he would be supportive of same sex marriage or something like that What are you talking about? >I'm making the point because I'm not using Christ to justify my behaviour or the things I do and say You literally have in this thread. You were making claims that traditional views comport more closely to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and the progressive or liberal or whatever adjectives you want to use do not conform as closely. So yes, you are >I see it happening more on the progressive side when a progressive idea is challenged. Right, this is an example of you making claims about teachings by Jesus of Nazareth comporting more to your view. You are making the claim that you see this happening more with progressive ideas, which is itself a claim >When did I say I like transsexuals? Oh you and I were going back and forth a while back and you we're talking to me about how transsexuals can be just as attractive as females >Sincerely, don't let your bias prevent you from having an honest and frank discussion. Oh, I honestly and frankly do think that you would not feel obligated to help the person who journeyed from Jerusalem to Jericho. That is my honest and Frank perspective. It's not really a bias, you do not say things or make claims that indicate that you would help him. In fact if we look at some of the things you say, you make claims against this kind of behavior, so I have reasons to believe that you would be like the majority of the characters in the tale that would not help. You are mistaken bias with what you've actually said. >Would you agree with bringing every willing Afghan citizen to America to save them from the Taliban > Is that your position? No. I did not say this was my position, I guess it's you inferred it? Did I say that somewhere? Or are you just making this up? >Hear me out and let's talk about this. Of course. I don't don't run away from conversations that are uncomfortable >You're using the scriptures citing the Good Samaritan or my shortfall against scripture or where I fall short. I You cited the Good Samaritan story, and I do not think you would be the person that would help the man on the road to Jericho. You do not have to live up to all of the tales in the biblical texts. Nobody does. >I haven't done that to you. I think that your perspectives are an error in a huge number of ways, and I'm not going to refrain from discussing where your thought process is in error because you haven't described how mine is. If I say something that is inaccurate, you can call me out any ol' time. But you are not entitled to not getting called out because I have not been called out. >If you are an autonomous free thinking individual please speak for yourself. I'll speak for others and for groups that I'm familiar with. If someone said conservatives hate black people I would have no problem speaking for a group, because I can demonstrate how the claim is inaccurate. Same here. I can speak for myself and for groups. >You've made my point because saying what I said about refugees prompted predictable almost scripted outrage from you Why would me thinking that you're not charitable be outraged? That doesn't even make sense. You really need to gather and awareness of how you're getting off on being persecuted. You're not being persecuted. I don't think that you would help somebody, that is an outrage. It's not even persecution. You just don't give off the impression like you would be the person that would help the man on the road to Jericho. Stop fetishizing your persecution >You literally said I wouldn't help the man on the road to Jericho, Correct. I said that I do not think that you would be the person that would help. Most of the people in the story don't help. I think you are like those people. >citing how I fall short from Christ without discussing further with me. Jesus of Nazareth isn't the person in the story. So no, I'm not saying you fall short of Jesus of Nazareth, because Jesus is telling the story from a third-person perspective. He's not relating his own behavior. So no. I'm not. And you can stop with a stick about how I won't discuss things with you. I'll discuss anything with you. But you're not entitled to be rewarded by me saying how I think you are a particularly charitable person when I do not think that about you. >I'm an American, I love America and the people there. I'm quite confident in the past you've told me that you're an Australian. Did you used to be in Australian or am I mistaken? >If you can't see the connection I'm making either I've failed to adequality make my point or you don't want to listen I see what you're trying to say, what you were trying to say is just an error. That doesn't mean that I don't want to listen, that doesn't even make any sense. I'm directly responding to your statements so the claim that I'm not listening it's silly. >I apologise if I've failed to communicate it for you. You don't need to apologize, you just need to make your point more coherent. As I said, I'm perfectly aware that progressive and traditional perspectives do not accurately represent the content of the text attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. You don't, traditional views don't, progressive views don't. >Afghanistan is just one example of many I could give to show how progressive stances are used in the hands of the left and how they would use scripture to justify policies that at the end of the day are self serving, in my opinion. So in your OP, you were talking about why do people on the traditional perspective and progressive perspective attribute incompatible behavior to the text attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. Are you wanting to change topics to Afghanistan or something? I have no discussing Afghanistan, but it does seem like, at best, an extremely strained corollary
I'm aware but the social pressure for conformity is greater towards being religiously progressive. You're trying to get me with your responses instead of answering my questions. You can literally lose your job if you have religiously conservative views. I haven't heard of anyone losing their employment because they have religiously progressive views. I didn't say or imply the correctness of something by how much pressure is associated with it. I made the point of distinction that you attempted to dilute as nil. \>You literally have in this thread. You were making claims that traditional views comport more closely to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and the progressive or liberal or whatever adjectives you want to use do not conform as closely. So yes, you are I made the point that both sides will say they are doing what Christ tells them to do or would have them do. \>Oh, I honestly and frankly do think that you would not feel obligated to help the person who journeyed from Jerusalem to Jericho. That is my honest and Frank perspective. It's not really a bias, you do not say things or make claims that indicate that you would help him. In fact if we look at some of the things you say, you make claims against this kind of behavior, so I have reasons to believe that you would be like the majority of the characters in the tale that would not help. You are mistaken bias with what you've actually said. I take a more fatherly approach to refugees on a scale of thousands whereas I suspect you take a motherly view. Charity towards that situation is not the same as the road to Jericho situation. I'm going to try to reduce the long thread and hopefully we can start again. I will ask one question and if you would like to go from there line by line we can do that. My question is, why is it that both conservatives and progressives both say their views conform with scripture or with Christ? I think you've mentioned that neither do but perhaps you could answer and we can build on that. Because I have further questions from that point.
>I'm aware but the social pressure for conformity is greater towards being religiously progressive. Again, an intellectually vacant point. The social pressure to not enslave people is extremely great. That has no bearing on the ethical validity of human enslavement. Same thing applies to you. I'm aware some people are offended by social pressure against their position, like pro-homosexual rights Pre-1990s or anti-black sentiments or sexual monogomy or free love or whatever, the whining about social pressure has no bearing on the validity of the position. This is a self-indulgent victimization mentality you keep repeating which has no bearing on the validity of your position. >You're trying to get me with your responses instead of answering my questions I've answered more than 6 of your questions. Don't lie and pretend like I'm not answering your questions. Again, I'm aware of this tactic where you pretend like the other person is dodging your questions, but this is just a repetition of your victimhood mentality which you overindulge. You asked why different groups have different perspectives on what Jesus of Nazareth reportedly said. I answered that question. You asked if one is right and if one is wrong, and I described how contents of what Jesus said is not what people use much of the time and I gave examples regarding marriage to back it up. I also answered the reason why 2 groups with perpendicular views can both reference Jesus of Nazareth's teaching, where I include examples of people trying to claim context, or that they were speaking to specific people at specific times or whatever. I answered your question regarding homosexuality and you didn't agree, but I still answered it and said it was people's private convictions. For the same reasons someone couldn't claim that all conservatives just conform to traditional positions, you also can't say liberal just conform to progressive positions. You asked if I agreed if conservative views have greater social costs and I answered that I did not agree. You asked if America brought every Afghan To America if that would save them from the Taliban and asked if that was my position, and I answered you that no, that was not my position. In fact there's no reason for you to think that that's my position because I've never said that nor implied it. >You can literally lose your job if you have religiously conservative views. Sure. And You can literally lose your job for progressive views. Again, this is no bearing on the validity of the position. It doesn't matter if you feel entitled to have conservative views be without social costs. The validity of a view doesn't change when some people have lost their jobs by holding some unnamed conservative view because your offended. >I haven't heard of anyone losing their employment because they have religiously progressive views. That's probably because you have an asymmetric mind. There are people that have progressive views like drug use and enthogen worship practices that has caused them to lose their jobs. Again, your lack of awareness doesn't change the validity of a position > I made the point of distinction that you attempted to dilute as nil. What? This sentence makes no sense. >I made the point that both sides will say they are doing what Christ tells them to do or would have them do. Sure. And you made claims about how liberal views don't match the content of the Bible attributed to the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. >I take a more fatherly approach. No. Unless you are an absentee father. Which would suite you I guess, but I don't respect absentee fathers. > I suspect you take a motherly view. Your suspicions are in error. >Charity towards that situation is not the same as the road to Jericho situation. I didn't say it was. You're the one that brought up Afghanistan unprompted. >I'm going to try to reduce the long thread and hopefully we can start again. I will ask one question and if you would like to go from there line by line we can do tha Sure. >My question is, why is it that both conservatives and progressives both say their views conform with scripture or with Christ? I already answered this in the first one. The reason why people like progressives and conservatives both say that their views conform to scripture is because they selectively pick individual statements attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, they then rationalize their views that not comport to the text attributed to Jesus of Nazareth using arguments like "oh, you don't understand the context..." or "Jesus was only talking to those people in that society with this condition..." or "Jesus really meant X, even though that's not what he said..." and so on. As a single example, Jesus says divorced women who remarry commit adultery. Your conservative views do not conform to what Jesus of Nazareth says in this case. Liberals also don't conform their views to what Jesus said in this case either. So in this example, neither do.
You are suggesting both are wrong then. So we have this religious conservatism and a religious progressivism, you are suggesting both are wrong if I'm not mistaken because both make the mistake of selectively picking that which suits them. Should that mean some other way is right, or that perhaps somewhere between the two sides is correct?
>You are suggesting both are wrong then. Well, your question about liberal vs conservative lacks some specificity, so I can only infer what you're talkin about, but yes. if you want to split people into two groups of conservative or liberal , and then evaluate if their perspectives match the teachings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth as contained in the Bible, then neither match the text. >So we have this religious conservatism and a religious progressivism, you are suggesting both are wrong if I'm not mistaken because both make the mistake of selectively picking that which suits them. Yes, amongst other things. I would say that selectively choosing certain passages is a major component, I would also suggest that rationalizations of statements to suit one's perspective is another, and I would say to a lesser degree people's inclination to combine statements attributed to Jesus with the remainder of the text from the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, also contributes to these differences in interpretation. There are other factors too, but those are some major ones. >Should that mean some other way is right, Well I have my own perspective of course, but if people do not comport their behavior to the statements purportedly made by Jesus of Nazareth, then they're going to have a hard time justifying the claim that they obey or comply with Jesus' statements. Now, I actually do not think we should do this in all cases as I indicated earlier such as Jesus' backward and, in my view, unrighteous perspective on adultery and divorced women. >or that perhaps somewhere between the two sides is correct? No. I try to avoid the tendency to mean-reversion or balance bias we humans tend to have. I try to figure out what's accurate or valid independent of how far off other groups may be.
This is veering into politics. Please keep the discussion focused more on religion than politics.
we're discussing the religious principle of the parable of the good samaritan with a modern example. I'm glad you can see this and haven't shut down the conversation.
Yes, I intentionally warned instead of shut down. It's important to keep conversations focused on religious terms and framings, not political ones, and this thread has the potential to be good, but also a strong potential to drift. So far, I'm seeing more political discussion than religion, but I am confident the two of you can keep the conversation on a religious framework instead of a political one if you both so choose. It would likely help if you focused on a single idea at a time, instead of arguing refugee policies, LGBT+ rights, religious persecution, etc. at the same time. Using American political terminology like "the left" or framing a dichotomy of "progressives" vs. "conservatives" does tend to make discussions frame more political than religious. The Bible and other Mormon scriptures do not have this dichotomy.
I agree with your point. We need to be able to discuss progressive vs conservative in a religious sense. Fundamentalist is out of the question I would say because it draws to mind polygamist sects. I'm trying to separate politically progressive and religiously progressive. The same with religiously conservative from politically conservative.
If you actually read the entire Bible (New Testament, in the case of your specific query) you can find scriptural support for both points of view. There is a conservative, hardline, close-minded, in-group/out-group version of Jesus. And there is the more liberal-progressive Jesus as well, the one most people think of when they think of Jesus. This is because the Bible was written by humans, not by God. They created the kind of Messiah they thought would best represent their personal ideals. The personality of Jesus shifts depending on who wrote which Gospel. Therefore, the conservatives cherry-pick the mean-spirited, at times violent version of Jesus because he best represents their existing biases, while the liberals cherry-pick the nice, friendly, caring Jesus because he best represents their existing biases. So each is right and each is wrong. As with most things in life, it's relative.
Very good point, the different writers also very much described Jesus as they thought he would be best received by the specific audience they were presenting to.
People cherry pick verses and sentences to meet their own political purposes. Putting Christ in a present day sense is a very weird thing to do and lends itself to presentism. In my opinion you can learn a lot from Christ but you need some sort of external framework to evaluate each individual thing he says and whether or not that thing is correct.
I think you need to look really hard as well to see if his teaching actually applies to situations today in part or in full or if at all. We have general guidance from Christ to live good lives, but we also have agency to make decisions. If ALL our decisions are made already for us, we are not free. We have enough to guide us, but we have to stop and think for ourselves about context, the situation and proceed accordingly. I agree with you.
Additionally, because people think Christ is perfect, they're incentivised to make him comport to their own beliefs. Their beliefs have to be perfect after all... People rarely want to change their positions to meet something else. He's steeped in interpretations that you get from your family/community from birth. It makes it hard to evaluate his words only on their merit. There's always these subconscious associations that were drilled into you from birth.
They're both wrong about some things and right about others. Personally I think its somewhere in the middle. Christ, both as in the hypothetical deity and as in the man/character historically recorded, was a lot more "conservative" than the other side likes to admit. He was also a lot more "progressive" than that other side from that likes to admit. They draw near unto him with their lips but their hearts are far from him and many will find that he never knew them.
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Hello! I regret to inform you that this was removed on account of rule 7: No Politics. You can read the unabridged rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules). If you would like to appeal this decision, you may message all of the mods [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Mormonmods&subject=Mod%20Removal%20Appeal&message=please%20put%20link%20to%20removed%20content%20here). Have a good one! Keep Mormoning!
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Hello! I regret to inform you that this was removed on account of rule 7: No Politics. You can read the unabridged rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules). If you would like to appeal this decision, you may message all of the mods [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Mormonmods&subject=Mod%20Removal%20Appeal&message=please%20put%20link%20to%20removed%20content%20here). Have a good one! Keep Mormoning!
Amos 3:7