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Because religion, particularly Catholicism/Christianity, are giant grifting operations who promise you better positions in heaven by giving money.
They pick and choose what they want to follow. Treating everyone kindly, and with humanity? Nah, no way. Slavery? Sure, have at it.
Plus, most of them didn't even read the bible anyway.
Religions a grift, this fits that ethos.
Read up on The Great Awakening in the USA.
You had large parts of the USA without an established church and a lot of religious freedom. So, you had pastors able to preach whatever they wanted without government intervention. This free market Jesus produced a lot of religious diversity. Some pastors used this as an opportunity to turn religion into a business.
It's always been a business. Even in biblical times. The only time Jesus got violent in the Bible, was when he beat the shit out of the money lenders doing business in the temple.
Crazy how the only thing to cause the son of God to fly into a violent rage was unfettered capitalism
The question was kind of vague in terms of what part of Christianity he was questioning, but it seems to be focused on how churches currently function. At that point, I figured I'd focus on prosperity gospel for some US churches, which is a uniquely American phenomenon.
To just say "religion has always been like that" may bury understanding on how the current form came into being.
For me the explanation is simple: there is no logic within religion. Note that the bible says to love one another but also says that slavery is OK and that gay men should be stoned. These things conflict with one-another; you cannot be kind if you have slaves and stone other people, and you cannot have slaves and stone people if you are kind. It is physically impossible to follow all the rules in the bible. Many of its followers do not realize this, so their critical thinking skills are either lacking or damaged from all the BibLe gOoD thumping that they received from a young age. And because their critical thinking skills are damaged, many do not realize the obvious problem with giving money when jesus was, according to the book, not condoning this.
when televengicals/megachurchs became a thing. think Joel osteen, kennith copeland. Joel is probably the richest one, because hes been televised for decades.
Literal centuries before that, there were indulgences.
"1-877-Kunts-4-Kriste, K-U-N-T Kunts for Kriste, 1-877-Kunts-4-Kriste, Donate your kash today!"
I mean all churches need funding to run and it comes from their members. Mega churches are another thing, run for money
These aren’t christians. The money behind jesusism is absurd. I am beyond quite confident that there would be no appreciation in that camp. Aaaaaand the absolute last thing Jesus is gonna wanna do is see a fucking cross. Are you kidding me? The fuck is wrong with people.? A lotta sick fucks ot there for sure. I’m sure Jesus has better things to do than reminisce about 2,000 some years ago. I don’t think it was a pleasant experience if’n my history stands correct.
Why couldn’t we have just done this in the first place?
These aren’t christians.
They absolutely are.
I think that a shiny golden calf will always trick the good into becoming the bad. Trump splashing that gilded gold shit everywhere made him quite successful. /s
Because there are three forms of power in this world: politics, violence, and money. Every monolithic entity worth its salt tries to get their serving of all three, and money is often the easiest to obtain.
There are several passages that suggest money & Christianity aren’t aligned. Several passages in Acts talk about the disciples selling everything after Jesus passes and living as a commune with no private property. It says they sold & shared everything together.
There’s the camel & needle proverb. There’s Matthew 25:32. There’s multiple passages that speak of selling what you own and giving it to the poor. There’s Jesus throwing the merchants out in the temple.
When did Christianity become like this? Probably when power saw it could abuse faith, so hundreds/thousands of years ago. Your instinct is great, and you should challenge Christians. I mentioned Matthew 25:32 because it seems so diametrically opposed to what many Christians in power say. We’re supposed to care for the homeless, the immigrant, the prisoner—that’s what this book says.
James 2:15 states that belief is not enough. Belief without works of faith is empty, the same as no faith at all. People telling you they are a Christian while behaving otherwise should be made aware of this passage.
I say this as a Unitarian Universalist. I study the Bible to inform my beliefs, but they are not defined by them. I do think Jesus has been commodified and warped, and the people in power who tell us we’re a Christian nation in the US have lost sight of scripture. They quote the Old Testament and ignore John 13:34.
I also studied all this so when ICE / this government comes for me, I’ll have my receipts. Maybe it won’t matter, but speaking truth to power is important. If so many people believe this book, why do we act like we do? It’s power’s fault, not religion.
Note, I was an atheist for 20 years. I know all about the ills of religion. UU is not like my Catholic Church growing up. If you haven’t been to UU or a Quaker org, it’s worth your time.
It’s power’s fault, not religion.
I was with you until this.
Religion is a set of beliefs, typically in things beyond what we can falsify (hence faith). It’s not inherently powerful to believe people should be treated with respect. A belief in democracy is a belief in giving others equal power to our own (part of my UU faith).
Unitarian Universalism holds very little power in the world. It’s a beautiful faith tradition. Sure, there are powerful religions, but again, that’s power, not religion.
I appreciate seeing the Quaker love on Lemmy! (UUs are awesome too, in my experience!)
It’s a great community and shares a lot with us. More people should know about faith communities doing the good work in the world, rather than swindling their congregations for mega churches with elaborate shows, while telling people “empathy is not Christian.” It’s absurd what’s happening in those congregations right now.
One of the proposed reasons the Romans adopted Christianity was because the church would help collect taxes. For all of the middle ages the church would be one of 3 instances that "run" a state (estates). Taxes were a big part of that job.
That means the answer to your question was just roughly 1700 years ago.
It has been this way for decades? It blew up when televangelism became a thing.
Sew your seed!
Pretty sure the Catholic Church was collecting money from across Europe to build oppulent fortresses and cathedrals way earlier than the 50 years ago
Fair, I stand corrected 🙂
Note Jesus didn't disdain giving alms, but said the poor widow gave more than rich men, who also flaunted giving. Women and orphans were the beneficiaries of these funds as well, I am guessing, as temple upkeep and scribes, priests maybe, etc.
He was enraged at the selling of animals for sacrifice. I can't imagine it was for usurious rates.
You'd have to further research it on sites that specifically address Jewish law, preferably from Aramaic and Jewish translations. I have fur babies hindering me rn
The 1100s is when an Italian merchant made up a story about the "eye of the needle" being a gate in Jerusalem that a camel could juuuuuuust about squeeze through if the owner bowed their head or something.
Is that lie really that old? Goddamn...
It is, but it's not any older, which is one of the reasons it's clearly made up. No one talked about it for over 1000 years then suddenly a guy with something to gain suddenly knows this "fact" about a place he's never been, and no one else outside of his vicinity can remember it.
it became a thing because the catholic church was (still is) actually the leftovers of the roman empire, and acted like an empire as a result (the only reason they dont today is because they no longer have the power to crush nations). this lends false legitimacy to others trying to use Christianity as a platform for personal gain.
Ask Martin Luther
It's not like the church wants to point those parts out and the followers sure aren't reading the thing.
I reject the idea that there is a correct way to read the Bible or worship Jesus. I certainly prefer liberation theology to prosperity Gospel, but I cannot say that one is doing Christianity better than the other.
I used to be Christian and I had all kinds of ideas about what was correct Christianity. I abandoned all that when I realized that those conceptions were much more about me than they were about Jesus or the Bible.
And I think that's true of the practicing faithful. Some are good, some are wicked, but the difference isn't in how they read the Bible, it's who is reading the Bible.
Most Christians don't really care what the Bible says, regardless of how much they like to pretend they do.
they dont care, because dont read it at all, or they read and choose a specific passage and forget everything else. i notice thier preaching almost never uses bible verses, its almost always guilt tripping people.
I mean I grew up with the tammy fay baker stuff so way before my time and im old.
Churches still have bills to pay. Just because they are exempt from some taxes doesn't mean they are bills exempt.
Can't be close to Jesus without a private jet!
Not all churches are like that. Are there some? Yes. But let’s be real
As long as the people in small responsible churches keep listening to the swindlers on TV, they are still part of the problem.
"Some" yeah ok.
When a neighbor was in the hospital for a week, their small church took $200 from their funds to help them buy groceries.
a televengelist megachurchs almost never does it though, smaller church denominations do that kind of charity.
Exactly. But people have the idea that Jesus was against money. He wasn't, in fact he lived off money given to him by "women of means," and spoke about how one should give. He was against greed and using G*d like these charlatans. He didn't tell regular people to give it all up, just greedy people, because they worshipped money, which is idolatry, adultery against the their marriage covenant to the father. And that's the issue.
i have never heard of that. Which doesn't mean much as there are thousands of differet christian churches and they disagree on many things.
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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