If god were real would there evangelists? Seems the more people involve religion into their lives the more hate is born. Non religious or spiritual people, in my experience, tend to be more loving and accepting and way better to be around.
Why do you people insist on taking things out of context? Matthew 11:11. “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” That alone says you’re misunderstanding everything stops at John. Luke 16:17 “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.” Jesus clarified the “Weightier matters of the law”: justice, mercy are as important as faith.
What’s with the “Yah”? There are no vowels in Hebrew.
You know that bearing false witness is a sin. So why are you doing it? I don’t just believe in him, I follow the Great Commission of Matthew 28–“teach them to obey everything that [Jesus] commanded.” You might start with Matthew 25:31-46. I’m ready to dust the sand off my sandals when it comes to whatever it is you’re teaching.
I've written about how the Christo-fascist authors of Project 2025 invoke the term "cheap grace" to insult liberals. But your vivid description of their gleeful judgment and damnation of others (actions Jesus himself condemned) is a stellar example of cheap grace. I now take these proclamations as admissions of their own failings or guilt, because they truly are cheap.
"For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is essentially fake salvation, as real salvation requires a serious commitment. And fake salvation is dangerous, because it lures you into a false sense of security until you find yourself losing out on eternal life." (from shortform.com)
In other words, cheap grace is paying lip service to salvation while continuing to live a sinful life. It's using Jesus as a fire escape, as my Christian Nationalist childhood pastor used to say.
Project 2025 (the Republican Christo-fascist manifesto I cover 5 times per week here) uses this religious term to describe liberals who care about the environment. Or liberals who care about immigrants only so they can hire them to clean their homes. (These are the views of the authors of P2025, not my own.) Christian Nationalists use the term "cheap grace" to accuse the left of hypocrisy.
I hope this explanation is helpful. If one googles the term "cheap grace," they can read reams more than I've written here.
I don't like people who judge others as if they're perfect. I don't understand hating a whole group of people because they don't agree with how they live their life. Who do these people think they are? To me, there is a lot of hate in their collective hearts. We're all here for a limited time. Why waste it filled with anger and hate and cruelty? I don't understand it. I feel pity for those people. What a miserable way to go through life.
Pope Paul, in his recent interview with Nora O’Donnell, said that he no longer believes that there is a hell. Over 2,000 years ago John said “For God so loved the World,” that means Everybody, right? when we sang, “Jesus loves the Little Children, that means Everybody, right? Not some certain group of people in America, 2000 yrs before there was an America!
Margie, if God is just and love, and he is, he must administer both. Hell is real. It’s eternal separation from the Father. It’s nothing that any human can understand, save Jesus as He was forsaken on the cross. He experienced it so we can avoid that unimaginable hell. Yes, the Father loves His creation and wills that none should parrish. If everyone at the end goes to Heaven, there’s no point of free will or the sacrifice of Jesus.
John, you know all you need to know to transcend beyond man made religion. No compassionate, loving god would allow the atrocities that take place on this planet or the perpetrators of many of them to live another day. How can a thoughtful, omnipotent god unleash a mountain to bury 2000+ people in the middle of the night? How can innocent children be allowed by a loving “creator” to be mowed down by bullets while sitting in their classrooms? How can a benevolent god put cancer in the brain of a baby or in the breast of a nursing mother? There is no logical Bible based answer to any of those questions, “logical” being the key term.
Religion has created far more problems than its ever solved. We need spiritual leaders free of the dogma of texts written by men for the benefit of, whom? In the absence of any proof that ANYTHING in the Bible is true and with a vast storehouse of information showing that 1) it’s not, 2) the texts have changed so many times in so many ways (John Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, among many others) that nobody has any clue what the original text was 3) it was written by plain old humans with plain old human opinions, biases, etc. 4) science, and 5) good old common sense, it’s a wonder that anyone who has done even a modicum of external source reading about the Bible believes any of it. Can we just not move on?
Sadly, much of the world cannot move on. They want so much to be in an exclusive club that gives them the rights and privileges of membership, and allows their exclusion of all nonmembers in all other aspects of life.
Religion is just another form of tribalism. Forming an in-group so you can pass judgement on out-groups. It’s sad how effective all forms of tribalism are in getting people to judge each other as “less than.” It’s the road to dehumanization, and religion shouldn’t get a pass because of lofty rhetoric.
One question. Do you believe Jesus is who He claims or not? Either He was a lunatic or He’s the son of the living God. I understand the remarks about misinterpretation, lost in translation, etc. The cornerstone, all pun intended, is who Jesus is or is not.
There may have been a man named Jesus. I don’t think he did things that would get him called a lunatic, and that’s just it. He didn’t walk on water, and anyone who believes he did is a lunatic. He didn’t feed hoards of people with one basket of food, and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. He didn’t turn water into wine (but what a cost savings that would achieve if that were possible at home), and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. He didn’t cause a blind man to see, and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. Jesus didn’t spend three days in a tomb and then rise from the dead, and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. I could go on.
The Christian traditions that stress the “one and done” acceptance of Jesus have always seemed to me like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The overemphasis on belief and a momentary experience is exactly the inverse of what Jesus teaches. If you love Jesus, you have to do the things He wants us to do…love our neighbors, work for justice and peace, care for the least among us. You can’t just say you are born again—newborns are pretty helpless—you actually have to grow the F up and walk with Jesus every day.
You can take the girl out of the Catholic Church…but you can’t take the church out of the girl….:-)
Jenn, it seems to me that evangelicals bask in the belief that they are saved and could care less about the teachings of Jesus. When people ask me if I am a Christian, my response baffles them, "I follow the life and teaching of Christ". They have no idea what that even means. I usually just get stared at. LOL I love it.
When I was growing up in the NY suburbs, there was a priest who said Mass many Sundays in our parish. He taught at the diocesan seminary and his sermons were always thought-provoking, even for a teenager. The line I remember nearly 50 years later is, “If tomorrow I were arrested for being a Christian, would they have enough evidence to convict me?”
Yup! Can one worship a God who roots for a winner of war, the outcome of an election or even a football game? These are all human made constructs and have a lot more to do with self interest than living a good and decent life.
Thank you John! I needed this today. I stopped believing in hell long ago and am so tired of the carrot of heaven that gets dangled in front of our faces. Always just out of reach, unless we follow those “who have the truth”. My soul feels so sad over the hatred people seem to so easily spread to those who choose to believe differently. As if only a few can possibly know the heart of God and everyone else must just live following those beliefs. So over evangelical Christians.
If I have to spend eternity with evangelicals, please send me to hell instead. I could imagine nothing worse. I am right there with you John. But hey, I also believe that heaven and hell are human constructs. Hell on earth would be the evangelicals controlling our nation.
If my entry into Heaven, if such a place exists, is dependent on my confession of faith, my born again date, my correct theological and doctrinal perspective, my interpretation of the Bible, my ability to discern God's voice and direction in my life, my attendance at services where the "whole gospel" is preached and believed, then I'm screwed. The fact is that I have walked away from such beliefs and from people who believe in such things. I used to be a youth minister and a bible teacher and traveling in and around the evangelical movement was exhausting and crazy making. What I saw was a bunch of people, well meaning though they may have been, who were striving to please a deity by their works. In doing so, their faith became about their efforts, their correctness, their closeness to God, etc. They strove for a place in a hierarchy that was about position, not love of God & people.
I have learned that what we understand about hell, hades, Gehenna, the eternal flame, Sheol are real-world concepts. As a Christian I think of sin as not being in right relationship with God, something we can all make right—and that it relates to how we treat/love others. I introduce to conservative, and especially MAGA, Christians Matthew 25:31-46
Where actions or neglect puts nations and individuals in the ‘blessed’ or ‘accursed’ column—and there’s nothing there about homosexuality, abortion, gender identity or sex. Instead we are judged for how we treat the hungry, sick, immigrant, and prisoner. Mention it to those who say people like me practice ‘weak grace’ and they’ll work very hard to concoct whatever out they think they can get away with.
I'm with you, but please help me with this: The anti-choice crowd that stands on the corner near our Planned Parenthood believes that babies are "the least of these"--so they scream and pray at the folks who choose not to carry a pregnancy. It doesn't matter to them the reason (even if those were their business). They think they are doing God's work by saving "the least of these." Help.
So true! The old men are the worst. Who are they to tell me what to do? They get cars to stop as they enter the driveway. I would *never* stop for some rando old guy.
Remind them to read Matthew 25:31-46 and ask them where zygotes, embryos and fetuses are on the list. They aren’t. And far too many on the anti-abortion side vote for politicians whose policies are on the ‘accursed’ side in that story. Ask them which story of Jesus has him approaching a pregnant woman and making a statement. There isn’t one. The story of him opening his arms to children is a powerful one of inviting a marginalized group into his movement; high infant and child mortality made them of lower moral status across the ancient world. The same cannot be said of fetuses. You can also go to TexasChristians.org/Bible and download our Bible and abortion fact sheet. Also drop us a line on the contact form; I’d like to know more. I wish I was closer to where you live. I’d love to come down and have a chat with them. They aren’t allowed to make the Bible in their own image.
I should have said ‘most of which’ end up in the drain. Anti-abortionists have conjured up and presented images which are inaccurate and intended to stoke emotions, using language that comes from medieval alchemy. Men do not deposit tiny humans into uteruses.
I have never heard that claim of how babies are made a total of zero times. But the reality is, as soon as sperm meets egg, that is a tiny human. If it isn't, if it is "potential life" as you call it, when is he or she allowed to call themself human in your eyes?
Good gosh, that page is full of falsehoods. Exodus 21 DOES incur a death penalty is the baby dies! It's only a fine if the baby comes prematurely does NOT die.
22 “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely[e] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Numbers 5 isn't an abortion (only one or two texts use that as a word and it's a faulty translation). The ritual is for infertility, not some magic abortion ritual - if that were true, David would have walked Bathsheba to Jerusalem's Planned Parenthood clinic to ditch the evidence, rather than do a Mouse Trap-level scheme to try and have her husband die.
I find your Jerusalem PP reference interesting given that abortion is completely legal in Israel and I believe it is free and part of their healthcare system services. They actually loosened the only restriction when Roe v Wade was overturned: a mandatory counseling session.
With all due respect, “Got questions?” Is not a reputable source of biblical interpretation. I’ve looked at their responses before and their responses are often specious. Go to the NRSV translation which strives to be the most accurate translation and you will find ‘uterus’ and ‘womb,’ not ‘bowels.’ ‘Bowels’ and ‘thigh’ are in the KJV translation which is not the most accurate translation. But setting that aside, in the Babylonian Talmud, Gitten 23b, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi writes that the fetus is as the thigh, i.e, considered part of the woman’s body. The ‘bitter water’ in the ritual is the way that the vestiges of an adulterous affair would be erased, not causing GI distress as ‘got questions?’ asserts. It’s not about God causing abortions but an adultery test ritual in Numbers 5 which we can reject as unjust. Just as an FYI: 80% of ‘post conception unborn babies’ (i.e., zygotes, blastocysts) are either absorbed into the uterine lining or are largely expelled and end up in the wastewater without the pregnant person ever knowing. This is the natural process of things.
Biblically, life/soul/sentience begins at breath (Hebrew ‘nephish; Genesis 2:7, Ezekiel 37). Jesus said nothing about abortion, and it is not present in his list of consequential sins in Matthew 25:31-46 as I stated above.
Please go back to TexasChristians.org/Bible and download the Bible and Abortion fact sheet and you will see quotes from evangelicals prior to the late 1970s explaining their views that align with the above and the Exodus 21:22-25 text. Again, the NRSV translation is ‘miscarriage’ that results in a fine. ‘Other harm’ is harm to the mother or another person. Evangelicals didn’t care about abortion until they succumbed to the lust for power gifted to them by Republican political operatives.
"With all due respect, “Got questions?” Is not a reputable source of biblical interpretation. I’ve looked at their responses before and their responses are often specious. Go to the NRSV translation which strives to be the most accurate translation"
1. Most translations strive to be the "most accurate" - why would you use a faulty translation. NRSV and older versions of the NIV are the worst offenders for this. It also doesn't help your case that the list of churches that embrace the NRSV are largely progressive churches that abandon a lot of theological stances that the vast majority of Christendom still embraces and has done for 2000 years.
"It’s not about God causing abortions but an adultery test ritual in Numbers 5 which we can reject as unjust."
Hang on, that's a law that God prescribed to the Israelites; how can you claim to be a Christian and then say that it's unjust. God IS just. The reason for it is if the woman *was* adulterous, then the penalty was infertility, and if she wasn't then nothing would happen to her (and things would probably get very awkward around the home after that).
Second of all, no Christian takes the Talmud seriously, just as most non-Catholic Christians don't take the Pope at his words. The English translations we have now, from multiple source
Please go back to biblegateway.com and actually read the Bible, and you will see that most of the Texas"Christians".org page and reasoning is nonsense.
"Jesus said nothing about abortion" - Jesus also never said anything explicitly about beastiality and incest either.
"Evangelicals didn’t care about abortion until they succumbed to the lust for power gifted to them by Republican political operatives."
Just putting it out there - I'm Australian. We have no Republican party. Pro-life people exist outside of America (many of whom are women)
You are certainly all over the place, making lots of assertions and launching hyperbolic attacks but you don’t really offer much detail. I am a Christian which means I follow Jesus and his teachings, which do not include abortion. In the book of Mark, he welcomes and embraces children, even though his disciples discouraged it because children were considered marginal in the broader society. On the other hand, he never approached a pregnant woman and said anything that we know of, even though the use of abortifacients were common in his time.
Since you are in Australia, you may not be aware of the history of evangelicals in the US and the bargain they made with ‘the devil’ of partisan politics which included fixating on opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ individuals. I don’t see you commenting on the Criswell and Exodus 21:22-25 quotes in the Texas Christian handout so you must have skipped over those. They are pertinent to understanding the shift in evangelicalism that started in the 1970s. Even so, that is likely the origins of your country’s anti-abortion movement, too, if it’s not Catholicism, which has historically been all over the place with respect to abortion in the last close to 2000 years.
I can always tell when someone’s hair is on fire because they don’t know how to address a counter to what they’ve been taught. BTW, the ‘Old Testament/Hebrew Bible’ is Jewish Tanakh, and the Hebrew nephish (breath/soul/sentience) applies to newborns as well as fully formed humans made by God outside the womb in Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37. That’s why I provided one example from a Jewish source and can provide several more if you’d like. There is one in particular that applies to newborns, and Criswell’s quote mirrors that belief. Whenever I bring up the counter to the Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Psalms references commonly cited by abortion opponents and point out the nephish concept, I get a similar response as you made—that’s ’Old Covenant.’ Without ‘Old Covenant’ there’s not even a hint of justification for abortion bans. And if Christians don’t follow the Talmud, they probably should give up the Tanakh found in our Bible, too. There goes the Decalogue (Ten Commandments).
Long ago, I stopped believing in the Hell I was taught about as a child. If there is a hell, it’s the choice one makes to be separated from Love for eternity. But it isn’t my job to determine who goes where. “Judge not, lest ye be judged” seems like a good maxim to live by.
Loving the conversations here, friends! Thanks for sharing your hearts. I'm grateful for this amazing community!
If god were real would there evangelists? Seems the more people involve religion into their lives the more hate is born. Non religious or spiritual people, in my experience, tend to be more loving and accepting and way better to be around.
Certainly not fake prophets who believe they are God!
You should re-read those…no prophets until that point doesn’t mean that’s the case going into the future.
Why do you people insist on taking things out of context? Matthew 11:11. “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” That alone says you’re misunderstanding everything stops at John. Luke 16:17 “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.” Jesus clarified the “Weightier matters of the law”: justice, mercy are as important as faith.
What’s with the “Yah”? There are no vowels in Hebrew.
He clarified it I. Matthew 23:23-24.
Okay. I got it. You practice cheerleading.
All I can think about reading your musings is Jesus warning of false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing.
You know that bearing false witness is a sin. So why are you doing it? I don’t just believe in him, I follow the Great Commission of Matthew 28–“teach them to obey everything that [Jesus] commanded.” You might start with Matthew 25:31-46. I’m ready to dust the sand off my sandals when it comes to whatever it is you’re teaching.
I've written about how the Christo-fascist authors of Project 2025 invoke the term "cheap grace" to insult liberals. But your vivid description of their gleeful judgment and damnation of others (actions Jesus himself condemned) is a stellar example of cheap grace. I now take these proclamations as admissions of their own failings or guilt, because they truly are cheap.
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined the term "cheap grace." You can read more about him here: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dietrich-Bonhoeffer
"For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is essentially fake salvation, as real salvation requires a serious commitment. And fake salvation is dangerous, because it lures you into a false sense of security until you find yourself losing out on eternal life." (from shortform.com)
In other words, cheap grace is paying lip service to salvation while continuing to live a sinful life. It's using Jesus as a fire escape, as my Christian Nationalist childhood pastor used to say.
Project 2025 (the Republican Christo-fascist manifesto I cover 5 times per week here) uses this religious term to describe liberals who care about the environment. Or liberals who care about immigrants only so they can hire them to clean their homes. (These are the views of the authors of P2025, not my own.) Christian Nationalists use the term "cheap grace" to accuse the left of hypocrisy.
I hope this explanation is helpful. If one googles the term "cheap grace," they can read reams more than I've written here.
I'm afraid this fellow is well into a rabbit hole. Bonhoeffer had much to offer, but only for those able to think beyond dogma.
I don't like people who judge others as if they're perfect. I don't understand hating a whole group of people because they don't agree with how they live their life. Who do these people think they are? To me, there is a lot of hate in their collective hearts. We're all here for a limited time. Why waste it filled with anger and hate and cruelty? I don't understand it. I feel pity for those people. What a miserable way to go through life.
Spot on. thank you
Pope Paul, in his recent interview with Nora O’Donnell, said that he no longer believes that there is a hell. Over 2,000 years ago John said “For God so loved the World,” that means Everybody, right? when we sang, “Jesus loves the Little Children, that means Everybody, right? Not some certain group of people in America, 2000 yrs before there was an America!
Margie, if God is just and love, and he is, he must administer both. Hell is real. It’s eternal separation from the Father. It’s nothing that any human can understand, save Jesus as He was forsaken on the cross. He experienced it so we can avoid that unimaginable hell. Yes, the Father loves His creation and wills that none should parrish. If everyone at the end goes to Heaven, there’s no point of free will or the sacrifice of Jesus.
John, you know all you need to know to transcend beyond man made religion. No compassionate, loving god would allow the atrocities that take place on this planet or the perpetrators of many of them to live another day. How can a thoughtful, omnipotent god unleash a mountain to bury 2000+ people in the middle of the night? How can innocent children be allowed by a loving “creator” to be mowed down by bullets while sitting in their classrooms? How can a benevolent god put cancer in the brain of a baby or in the breast of a nursing mother? There is no logical Bible based answer to any of those questions, “logical” being the key term.
Religion has created far more problems than its ever solved. We need spiritual leaders free of the dogma of texts written by men for the benefit of, whom? In the absence of any proof that ANYTHING in the Bible is true and with a vast storehouse of information showing that 1) it’s not, 2) the texts have changed so many times in so many ways (John Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, among many others) that nobody has any clue what the original text was 3) it was written by plain old humans with plain old human opinions, biases, etc. 4) science, and 5) good old common sense, it’s a wonder that anyone who has done even a modicum of external source reading about the Bible believes any of it. Can we just not move on?
Sadly, much of the world cannot move on. They want so much to be in an exclusive club that gives them the rights and privileges of membership, and allows their exclusion of all nonmembers in all other aspects of life.
I burned my membership card.
Religion is just another form of tribalism. Forming an in-group so you can pass judgement on out-groups. It’s sad how effective all forms of tribalism are in getting people to judge each other as “less than.” It’s the road to dehumanization, and religion shouldn’t get a pass because of lofty rhetoric.
The author is Bart Ehrman, not John Ehrman
One question. Do you believe Jesus is who He claims or not? Either He was a lunatic or He’s the son of the living God. I understand the remarks about misinterpretation, lost in translation, etc. The cornerstone, all pun intended, is who Jesus is or is not.
There may have been a man named Jesus. I don’t think he did things that would get him called a lunatic, and that’s just it. He didn’t walk on water, and anyone who believes he did is a lunatic. He didn’t feed hoards of people with one basket of food, and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. He didn’t turn water into wine (but what a cost savings that would achieve if that were possible at home), and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. He didn’t cause a blind man to see, and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. Jesus didn’t spend three days in a tomb and then rise from the dead, and anyone who thinks he did is a lunatic. I could go on.
Well, that’s the catch. Scripture which has been cross referenced from other texts says Jesus did those things. We can believe it or dismiss.
The Christian traditions that stress the “one and done” acceptance of Jesus have always seemed to me like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The overemphasis on belief and a momentary experience is exactly the inverse of what Jesus teaches. If you love Jesus, you have to do the things He wants us to do…love our neighbors, work for justice and peace, care for the least among us. You can’t just say you are born again—newborns are pretty helpless—you actually have to grow the F up and walk with Jesus every day.
You can take the girl out of the Catholic Church…but you can’t take the church out of the girl….:-)
Jenn, it seems to me that evangelicals bask in the belief that they are saved and could care less about the teachings of Jesus. When people ask me if I am a Christian, my response baffles them, "I follow the life and teaching of Christ". They have no idea what that even means. I usually just get stared at. LOL I love it.
When I was growing up in the NY suburbs, there was a priest who said Mass many Sundays in our parish. He taught at the diocesan seminary and his sermons were always thought-provoking, even for a teenager. The line I remember nearly 50 years later is, “If tomorrow I were arrested for being a Christian, would they have enough evidence to convict me?”
You nailed it!
What a beautiful essay. You give hope to those of us trying to love our way through the hatred. You give me hope. ❤️
Yup! Can one worship a God who roots for a winner of war, the outcome of an election or even a football game? These are all human made constructs and have a lot more to do with self interest than living a good and decent life.
Thank you John! I needed this today. I stopped believing in hell long ago and am so tired of the carrot of heaven that gets dangled in front of our faces. Always just out of reach, unless we follow those “who have the truth”. My soul feels so sad over the hatred people seem to so easily spread to those who choose to believe differently. As if only a few can possibly know the heart of God and everyone else must just live following those beliefs. So over evangelical Christians.
Me, too! They never seem to see the plank in their own eyes.
If I have to spend eternity with evangelicals, please send me to hell instead. I could imagine nothing worse. I am right there with you John. But hey, I also believe that heaven and hell are human constructs. Hell on earth would be the evangelicals controlling our nation.
90% of evangelicals voted for the orange anti-Christ, and will do so again.
Lord have Mercy!
Trump is counting on his ‘army’ of God Maga cultist. And those that can be made to believe in absurdity, can be convinced to commit atrocity.
“All that evil needs to thrive, is for good men(women) to do nothing”.
Trump is proof there is no merciful God.
If my entry into Heaven, if such a place exists, is dependent on my confession of faith, my born again date, my correct theological and doctrinal perspective, my interpretation of the Bible, my ability to discern God's voice and direction in my life, my attendance at services where the "whole gospel" is preached and believed, then I'm screwed. The fact is that I have walked away from such beliefs and from people who believe in such things. I used to be a youth minister and a bible teacher and traveling in and around the evangelical movement was exhausting and crazy making. What I saw was a bunch of people, well meaning though they may have been, who were striving to please a deity by their works. In doing so, their faith became about their efforts, their correctness, their closeness to God, etc. They strove for a place in a hierarchy that was about position, not love of God & people.
In all my church going, no one ever preached on the sin of greed.
I came to see the same truths. It’s freeing not to judge people on their “salvation” and so much easier to just love them.
I have learned that what we understand about hell, hades, Gehenna, the eternal flame, Sheol are real-world concepts. As a Christian I think of sin as not being in right relationship with God, something we can all make right—and that it relates to how we treat/love others. I introduce to conservative, and especially MAGA, Christians Matthew 25:31-46
Where actions or neglect puts nations and individuals in the ‘blessed’ or ‘accursed’ column—and there’s nothing there about homosexuality, abortion, gender identity or sex. Instead we are judged for how we treat the hungry, sick, immigrant, and prisoner. Mention it to those who say people like me practice ‘weak grace’ and they’ll work very hard to concoct whatever out they think they can get away with.
Perfect response❣️
If I could I would hit “Like” a thousand times to your comment. Thank you!
I'm with you, but please help me with this: The anti-choice crowd that stands on the corner near our Planned Parenthood believes that babies are "the least of these"--so they scream and pray at the folks who choose not to carry a pregnancy. It doesn't matter to them the reason (even if those were their business). They think they are doing God's work by saving "the least of these." Help.
And where I live they are all old white men. I have never seen a person of color picketing a place for abortions.
So true! The old men are the worst. Who are they to tell me what to do? They get cars to stop as they enter the driveway. I would *never* stop for some rando old guy.
Remind them to read Matthew 25:31-46 and ask them where zygotes, embryos and fetuses are on the list. They aren’t. And far too many on the anti-abortion side vote for politicians whose policies are on the ‘accursed’ side in that story. Ask them which story of Jesus has him approaching a pregnant woman and making a statement. There isn’t one. The story of him opening his arms to children is a powerful one of inviting a marginalized group into his movement; high infant and child mortality made them of lower moral status across the ancient world. The same cannot be said of fetuses. You can also go to TexasChristians.org/Bible and download our Bible and abortion fact sheet. Also drop us a line on the contact form; I’d like to know more. I wish I was closer to where you live. I’d love to come down and have a chat with them. They aren’t allowed to make the Bible in their own image.
Thank you for your thoughts. I will use your abortion facts.
Why do you think fetuses are a separate species? They are a stage of human life.
They are potential life, much of which in the initial stages go down the drain.
I should have said ‘most of which’ end up in the drain. Anti-abortionists have conjured up and presented images which are inaccurate and intended to stoke emotions, using language that comes from medieval alchemy. Men do not deposit tiny humans into uteruses.
I have never heard that claim of how babies are made a total of zero times. But the reality is, as soon as sperm meets egg, that is a tiny human. If it isn't, if it is "potential life" as you call it, when is he or she allowed to call themself human in your eyes?
Good gosh, that page is full of falsehoods. Exodus 21 DOES incur a death penalty is the baby dies! It's only a fine if the baby comes prematurely does NOT die.
22 “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely[e] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Numbers 5 isn't an abortion (only one or two texts use that as a word and it's a faulty translation). The ritual is for infertility, not some magic abortion ritual - if that were true, David would have walked Bathsheba to Jerusalem's Planned Parenthood clinic to ditch the evidence, rather than do a Mouse Trap-level scheme to try and have her husband die.
This is all nonsense.
https://www.gotquestions.org/Numbers-abortion.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/abortion-Bible.html
I find your Jerusalem PP reference interesting given that abortion is completely legal in Israel and I believe it is free and part of their healthcare system services. They actually loosened the only restriction when Roe v Wade was overturned: a mandatory counseling session.
With all due respect, “Got questions?” Is not a reputable source of biblical interpretation. I’ve looked at their responses before and their responses are often specious. Go to the NRSV translation which strives to be the most accurate translation and you will find ‘uterus’ and ‘womb,’ not ‘bowels.’ ‘Bowels’ and ‘thigh’ are in the KJV translation which is not the most accurate translation. But setting that aside, in the Babylonian Talmud, Gitten 23b, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi writes that the fetus is as the thigh, i.e, considered part of the woman’s body. The ‘bitter water’ in the ritual is the way that the vestiges of an adulterous affair would be erased, not causing GI distress as ‘got questions?’ asserts. It’s not about God causing abortions but an adultery test ritual in Numbers 5 which we can reject as unjust. Just as an FYI: 80% of ‘post conception unborn babies’ (i.e., zygotes, blastocysts) are either absorbed into the uterine lining or are largely expelled and end up in the wastewater without the pregnant person ever knowing. This is the natural process of things.
Biblically, life/soul/sentience begins at breath (Hebrew ‘nephish; Genesis 2:7, Ezekiel 37). Jesus said nothing about abortion, and it is not present in his list of consequential sins in Matthew 25:31-46 as I stated above.
Please go back to TexasChristians.org/Bible and download the Bible and Abortion fact sheet and you will see quotes from evangelicals prior to the late 1970s explaining their views that align with the above and the Exodus 21:22-25 text. Again, the NRSV translation is ‘miscarriage’ that results in a fine. ‘Other harm’ is harm to the mother or another person. Evangelicals didn’t care about abortion until they succumbed to the lust for power gifted to them by Republican political operatives.
"With all due respect, “Got questions?” Is not a reputable source of biblical interpretation. I’ve looked at their responses before and their responses are often specious. Go to the NRSV translation which strives to be the most accurate translation"
1. Most translations strive to be the "most accurate" - why would you use a faulty translation. NRSV and older versions of the NIV are the worst offenders for this. It also doesn't help your case that the list of churches that embrace the NRSV are largely progressive churches that abandon a lot of theological stances that the vast majority of Christendom still embraces and has done for 2000 years.
"It’s not about God causing abortions but an adultery test ritual in Numbers 5 which we can reject as unjust."
Hang on, that's a law that God prescribed to the Israelites; how can you claim to be a Christian and then say that it's unjust. God IS just. The reason for it is if the woman *was* adulterous, then the penalty was infertility, and if she wasn't then nothing would happen to her (and things would probably get very awkward around the home after that).
Second of all, no Christian takes the Talmud seriously, just as most non-Catholic Christians don't take the Pope at his words. The English translations we have now, from multiple source
Please go back to biblegateway.com and actually read the Bible, and you will see that most of the Texas"Christians".org page and reasoning is nonsense.
"Jesus said nothing about abortion" - Jesus also never said anything explicitly about beastiality and incest either.
"Evangelicals didn’t care about abortion until they succumbed to the lust for power gifted to them by Republican political operatives."
Just putting it out there - I'm Australian. We have no Republican party. Pro-life people exist outside of America (many of whom are women)
You are certainly all over the place, making lots of assertions and launching hyperbolic attacks but you don’t really offer much detail. I am a Christian which means I follow Jesus and his teachings, which do not include abortion. In the book of Mark, he welcomes and embraces children, even though his disciples discouraged it because children were considered marginal in the broader society. On the other hand, he never approached a pregnant woman and said anything that we know of, even though the use of abortifacients were common in his time.
Since you are in Australia, you may not be aware of the history of evangelicals in the US and the bargain they made with ‘the devil’ of partisan politics which included fixating on opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ individuals. I don’t see you commenting on the Criswell and Exodus 21:22-25 quotes in the Texas Christian handout so you must have skipped over those. They are pertinent to understanding the shift in evangelicalism that started in the 1970s. Even so, that is likely the origins of your country’s anti-abortion movement, too, if it’s not Catholicism, which has historically been all over the place with respect to abortion in the last close to 2000 years.
I can always tell when someone’s hair is on fire because they don’t know how to address a counter to what they’ve been taught. BTW, the ‘Old Testament/Hebrew Bible’ is Jewish Tanakh, and the Hebrew nephish (breath/soul/sentience) applies to newborns as well as fully formed humans made by God outside the womb in Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37. That’s why I provided one example from a Jewish source and can provide several more if you’d like. There is one in particular that applies to newborns, and Criswell’s quote mirrors that belief. Whenever I bring up the counter to the Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Psalms references commonly cited by abortion opponents and point out the nephish concept, I get a similar response as you made—that’s ’Old Covenant.’ Without ‘Old Covenant’ there’s not even a hint of justification for abortion bans. And if Christians don’t follow the Talmud, they probably should give up the Tanakh found in our Bible, too. There goes the Decalogue (Ten Commandments).
Actually, referring back to TexasChristians.org, just as you implored me, two of the chapters "define life as beginning... with breath"
- The Garden of Eden is arguably allegorical, but that aside, the man had literally just been created BY GOD DIRECTLY. It's not a foetus
- Ezekiel 37 is, first and foremost PROPHETIC VISION, and it can also be construed that the people there had already lived and died.
You want specious reasoning? THAT is specious!
Long ago, I stopped believing in the Hell I was taught about as a child. If there is a hell, it’s the choice one makes to be separated from Love for eternity. But it isn’t my job to determine who goes where. “Judge not, lest ye be judged” seems like a good maxim to live by.