I'm sympathetic to your take, but I disagree. I personally find a powerful call for non-violence in Christianity, specifically in the Gospels. But there are at least a few other worldviews out there that result in a life dedicated to peace and love.
And I think this is tangential to your point, but it has to be said that there are many different approaches to Christianity, many of which have lead (and are actively leading) to terrible violence.
Why in a particular do you believe that Christianity is the only religion and/or belief fit for this purpose? It seems like a very bold statement given the overlapping and diverse nature of religious beliefs.
The sermon on the mount was a moral quantum leap at the time it was delivered. “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” You aren’t getting that anywhere else. Additionally, the entire narrative around the crucifixion of a perfectly innocent victim is designed to put the “what if I’m wrong” voice in the back of your head when you’re engaging in mob or retributive violence.
Do you have a lot of experience and knowledge around other non-Abrahamic world religions to make such a bold claim?
Because I can think of at least a few (Jainism, various Chinese schools of thought, etc) that capture the spirit if not the exact message of "love your enemy".
Yeah, the Buddhist or Jain approach is more about detachment and non-harm. It feels almost clinical in its universality. “Love your enemies” is much more personal and emotionally demanding. It’s not just “don’t hurt people” or “be compassionate to all beings,” it’s specifically telling you to have positive feelings toward people who are actively trying to harm you. Combine with the innocent victim motif and you get something really unique.
> It feels almost clinical in its universality. “Love your enemies” is much more personal and emotionally demanding.
To me, “Love your enemies”, feels abusive -- or being groomed for abuse. Love those who hurt you. I agree that is more emotionally demanding, mostly in a personally harmful way. I'll take Buddha's approach to Devadatta over the Jesus "love your enemy". I can have compassion and understanding for an enemy, I would even say it's vital to preventing further harm -- understanding them, their motives and having compassion with that understanding. But loving them? That feels more like inviting violence while pleading with them to stop while handing them a stick. Of course there is a fine line of overlap and in the end both can be taken the same way. I simply believe compassion and understanding is more meaningful and less likely to be used to keep one in an abusive situation.
I agree.
My own experience with it, being forced to go to "bible study" and many Christian events/groups in my youth; is that it is an ideology pushed by very despicable people who will constantly behave in extremely abusive ways and require of you that not only you let them do that but you actually "love" them (by acting in ways that are against you own values and serve them in a very practical way).
The amount of emotional/psychological abuse coming from the women in charge of those bible study groups was absolutely maddening. I have many horror stories.
Now, I can understand why they say and do the thing they do; and I can definitely be compassionate about their shortcomings that makes them behave that way. I could almost forgive them. But I definitely cannot "love" them under any circumstance. As far as I'm concerned, they are an illegitimate dominant force and need to be fighten for good.
I think the ideology of "love your enemies" is pushed hard precisely for case like this. They intuitively know they are pushing a lie to enslave others to their bullshit and if people ever figure out what's going on, they need to have a "failsafe" to avoid retaliation.
I dumbfounded when people push Christianity as something worthwhile and even good. They are responsible for a lot of suffering, obscurantism and unjustifiable domination and a whole lot of warmongerings.
It still happens today and is still a way to brainwash a lot of people and forbid them from thinking for themselves. It is an utterly destructive ideology and the only reason the world is what it is today, is because some people got wiser in France a few centuries ago and said that they have enough of the bullshit.
I think the modern tentative of presenting Christianism as something good is because they have lost the war and have fully migrated to deceptive "argumentation", wolf in sheep clothing style.
Jesus was not the first person to preach the concept of loving your enemies. At the very least, everything he preached was based on existing Jewish philosophy, particularly the messianic strain of Judaism he was a part of, but it also existed (and preceded Christ) in Buddhism, Taoism and the Babylonian Councils of Wisdom. Nothing Jesus preached was unique.
I suggest a look at the Esoterica channel on Youtube for a perspective on Jesus as a historical figure in the context of Judaism at the time[0]
I think you’re (or, whoever you’re referencing) is conflating conceptual similarities with actual equivalence. Even if Jesus was building on Jewish tradition, The Hebrew Bible is full of imprecatory psalms calling down curses on enemies. Even the most expansive interpretations of “love your neighbor” in Jewish law didn’t extend to active enemies.
See my other response on eastern thought. “Babylonian Councils of Wisdom” is vague
He's referring to: Do not return evil to the man who disputes with you;
Requite with kindness your evil-doer,
Maintain justice to your enemy,
Smile to your adversary. (Akkadian, before 1100 BC)
Yeah, that’s the problem. In my estimation a large part of it is because Christianity, especially as practiced in the United States, is a cultural phenomenon. Evangelicalism has won the popularity contest, and it’s not moored by anything. There’s an uptick in new Catholics and Orthodox converts though, which are more “moored” if you will by tradition and at least some kind of doctrinal constraint.
So, since Evangelicals don't meet the bar, but Catholics do, it's not Christianity (the belief in Christ/a singular Judean God) that is the relevant demarcation, it's adherence to canon.
This undermines your thesis, because it's not the mystic woo about virgin birth and transubstantiation and resurrection (which they all profess to believe in) that's important - it's the canon - adherence to which is entirely orthogonal to faith.
No, it is just Christianity that is the demarcation. I’m saying that when you have American evangelicalism (which functions as a social club, and is not moored by anything other than “get people in the door”) as your delivery mechanism, you’re less likely to get solid catechisis. This is of course not impossible, I know many bad catholic Christian’s and many good Protestant Christians, but your odds of getting the good news delivered correctly are higher in more orthodox settings.
How does Catholicism not function as the village social club in its DNA?
It can't in large parts of the US because it's a fringe minority, but doesn't it behave in the exact same way in an area where it is the dominant social affiliation?
Its rituals are just as odd and esoteric as the practices of the stranger evangelical churches.
It does, but the distinction I’m making is that is not its primary function, unlike many evangelical churches in the United States.
Because this is the case, and because of the hierarchy in place for interpreting scripture and handing down sacred tradition, it becomes less likely that there will be problematic theological dilution or drift.
I worry the new converts will make Catholicism and Orthodoxy more Evangelical, not the other way around. Just look at the current crop of American Catholics like Thiel and Vance and the vile rhetoric they spit out about their fellow human beings.
Biden was closest to a traditional Catholic and they *loathed* him.
Christianity has been awash in "mimetic violence spirals" for a thousand years, and some of those memes come right out of the Bible. WTF are you even talking about?
The enlightenment wouldn’t have happened without Christianity. universal human dignity, individual rights, the concept that reason can discern moral truth, the university system where Enlightenment thinking developed all grew from Christian soil
But the Church didn't believe in the universality of anything other than their own authority and correctness. Jews, Muslims, and "pagans" (even Protestants and other heretical Christians) were routinely harassed and killed, women were essentially the property of men, slavery was ubiquitous and kings ruled by divine right, all justified by Christian dogma. And they didn't believe in reasoning outside of an explicitly Christian framework or discerning any moral truth not grounded in Biblical doctrine.
Christianity may have inspired the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment succeeded because it was able to separate philosophy, ethics, law and science (such as it was, "natural philosophy") from Biblical dogma and the Church.
Christianity incorporated a lot of paganism in the medieval era and still maintains it today. You can see it in the old architecture, iconography, and the holidays.
>kings ruled by divine right
Paradoxically, "The Church" was against this idea and it only came about after the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing Thirty Years War.
>slavery was ubiquitous
The history of Christian abolitionists is well documented.
>women were essentially the property of men
Are you talking about Catholic/Orthodox church doctrine, state-run churches like the church of England, the streak of puritanism in the United States, or something else? Are you referring to the teachings in Leviticus/Deuteronomy? The gospel contains multiple instances where Jesus refused to condemn women accused of adultery.
When thinking about Christianity, I personally make the distinction between the Christian faith, and the various Churches i.e. the political institutions that grew around the Christian faith.
In its first few centuries Christianity was community-centered, until about the 4th century when it started getting institutionalized in Rome.
I've long thought that Christianity held back human advancement for a good thousand years and now we have evil people pushing Christo-fascism and yet the church leaders seem very quiet.
Why would the church leaders say anything? More power to them, they get to profit without taking any risk and without having to say anything that could be condemnable. It's a win-win for them.
If you spend enough time around them, you realize that they are too often awful people and that the scripture is actually their way to moral absolution.
As for your first statement, this is the correct explanation, that is supported by every historian that isn't a bible pusher.
Surely that's more Western philosophy than Christianity. If anything, Christianity impeded social progress. Even now, the most vocal Christians would contend that moral truths owe to scripture than reason.
Exactly. Things started to get much better for the common man when Christianity was repelled by enough people. It happened in France and is precisely why the "Enlightenment" was the most successful there.
Christianity is just the bullshit theory/moral code that took over when the roman empire started to fall under its own weight (and morals became bad enough that some counterbalance was necessary).
Christians have done a good bit of violence, including the crusades and Hitler and Putin calling themselves Christian. I think Jainism might be the least violent of the major religions.
The ideology of vegetarianism is extremely destructive. Particularly for humans.
It is no coincidence that Hitler was a vegetarian. The roots are extremely similar: a deep hatred for humans, to the point that animals are declared not only equals but even better than humans. Hitler loved his dog more than any human; it just reveals a deep truth about his motivations and behavior.
You may not have researched or thought about it a lot but I can assure you this is a very valid observation.
And I think this is tangential to your point, but it has to be said that there are many different approaches to Christianity, many of which have lead (and are actively leading) to terrible violence.