Why Christianity?

You didn’t notice people getting killed on every corner and bodies piling up in the streets? Must be the government propaganda covering it up. Just watch out for those “no-go” zones.

[quote=“Il Ðoge”]

The gist of my argument, which you so gracefully invited me to set out although I don’t have time to write up in full right now, is that when the Bible was written it had two main contexts. The first was the divine right of kings – the rulers were said to get their authority to rule from the divine. If they messed this up then they were failing the divine and from the Christian point of view, could even be the anti-christ. What this means is that when Christians talk about not taking personal revenge and making way for the wrath of God, the government was considered to be an extension of the wrath of God. So what they were really saying was to handle your disputes through the legal system. After governments secularized, it started to look like a call to procedural pacifism, which it was not.[/quote]

The Bible was written over a period of hundreds of years; or rather the separate parts of it originated over hundreds of years and in very different contexts: wandering tribes; settled farmers in villages without any central authorities other than local religious figures (Judges); local warring kingdoms; exile and return as subjugated people under great empires.

And the government the early Christians we’re talking about was the Roman Empire- and many did actually consider the Emperor Nero to be the Anti-Christ, as Zla’od pointed out. Then came a period when Christians were trying to not stir up trouble with the Empire - unfortunately or them rejection of the divinity of the Emperor and of the gods protecting the Empire was considered treason.

One thing with the Roman oppression point; it clears up the “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two” verse. It’s in the context of Roman soldiers impressing civilians and forcing them to carry the soldiers packs to the next campsite.

Though it also says that if someone sues you in court (not necessarily the government, we’re talking private action here) for your shirt, give him your cloak as well

And: “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

And of course a slap across the face is not necessarily an act done by an oppressor; it could be a challenge to a duel, for example, or a simple act of aggression: “Are you a man or a mouse?”

The problem with that is that governments didn’t secularise until the late 18th C, with the United States and Revolutionary France being the first I suppose you could say the Glorious Revolution in 1688, for rejecting the Divine Right of Kings. I suppose you could even go back to the Locke’s attacks on Filmer during the English Revolution in the 1640s.

Meanwhile Christian pacifism based on turning the other cheek went back to the time of the early Christians in the first century. Being impractical, or at least inconvenient, it never became widely accepted, especially by those Christians happily taking up the sword to kill both pagans and their fellows.

You didn’t notice people getting killed on every corner and bodies piling up in the streets? Must be the government propaganda covering it up. Just watch out for those “no-go” zones.[/quote]

I’m in Stockport. God’s own country. :cactus:

You didn’t notice people getting killed on every corner and bodies piling up in the streets? Must be the government propaganda covering it up. Just watch out for those “no-go” zones.[/quote]

I’m in Stockport. God’s own country. :cactus:[/quote]

That’s two down from Oldham, where me old Mum lives, though the ancestral homelannd is Urmston.

Though it sounds like you’re living in the belly of the Beast:

dailymail.co.uk/news/article … ttack.html

You didn’t notice people getting killed on every corner and bodies piling up in the streets? Must be the government propaganda covering it up. Just watch out for those “no-go” zones.[/quote]

I’m in Stockport. God’s own country. :cactus:[/quote]

That’s two down from Oldham, where me old Mum lives, though the ancestral homelannd is Urmston.

Though it sounds like you’re living in the belly of the Beast:

dailymail.co.uk/news/article … ttack.html[/quote]

Well, chavs are gonna chav. The thing with the UK isthat if you have enough social mobility to get to Taiwan, you have enough to find yourself a bit of ‘green and pleasant’ (land, not weed).

I agree that the Christian idea that thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. doesn’t square with 2,000 years of bloodshed perpetrated by the Christian countries. But the quote can also be read as do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which can be interpreted as the law of the old Testament: a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, which is the essence of blood feuds or vendettas well known in most Mediterranean cultures.

Having said that, I think there can be no doubt that Christianity, like Buddhism, had a civilizing effect that included an improved moral code and less killing. People in pre-Christian Europe did do a good deal of killing. When I was younger, I read the Orkneyinga saga. Just the name of those guys like Eric bloody ax tells you all you need to know. Most of them never reached old age.

There is a tremendous amount of violence even genocide in the OT. Kind of turns me off.

Unfortunately, history is full of violence. Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t make it better.