Most christians seem to ignore most or all of the bible, anyway.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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After reading the book, I realized I’m following much more of the Bible as a Muslim than an average Christard zealot does.
As an atheist who tries to do the right thing for people, same. If he lived today, Jesus would probably be a communist and thrown out by Christians.
I'm certain there are Muslim commies, probably some Christian commies too, right? The redistribution of wealth (if not the means of production) in a more equitable manner and the condemnation of greed are part of and at the core the message of prophets Jesus and Mohammed. 👍
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There's some line in the New Testamant that absolves Christians of the obligation to observe the laws of Kashrut and whatnot, if I recall, but I couldn't tell you where it is or how exhaustive it is.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
- Matthew 5:17 KJV
To be a follower of Jesus, which is what the disciples originally called themselves, you would need to observe the law... IE, follow the original kosher laws and such.
The real (historical) reasons why Christians don't follow Jesus's religious traditions, come from an ease of assimilation. The Catholic church assimilated pagans into the religion, and it was easier to do so by telling them they don't have to change their current traditions, and that they just have to celebrate Easter, for example, for the birth of Christ and not as a celebration of the goddess of war, love, and fertility.
There are movements that try to go back to this core belief, though. Jews for Jesus and Messianic Judaism are two such movements, where they celebrate Judaism nearly in its entirety, while also believing Jesus was their savior and following his teachings. Truly an interesting, seemingly contradictory, mix of views.
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I am fully aware that there are disagreements on whether or not Catholicism is Christianity or even whether it's a monotheistic or polytheistic religion, and, as such, whether the Catholic assimilations of pagans were relevant to Christianity as a whole. But, honestly, I couldn't care less. In the wise words of Shepherd Book, "I don’t care what you believe in, just believe in it".
I think it goes a bit deeper than just ease of assimilation. A big part of Paul's ministry was the idea that only Jesus can provide salvation, which implies that following all the laws can not. At least that was my understanding based on what I remember reading.
Exactly. The letter to the Romans or Acts 15 for instance. Im not defending Christianity, to be clear, I'm defending Lemmy from nonsense. I'm a card holding Satanist.
But what does that even mean? Jesus comes to you and holds you by the hand into salvation? Or following the teachings of Jesus does? Because if that's so, then you'd also have to follow the law, right? Paul is a trickster.
Hear what Jesus said Himself:
Matthew 22:34-40
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Where do I begin...
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Easter was never celebrated for a goddess. Easter has always been Christian. The myth about that comes from the word itself which was just a germanic month named after said goddess. It's like saying Christians worship the sun for going to church on Sunday.
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The time you are speaking about, the Roman Catholic Church we know of now wasn't the same as the Catholic/Orthodox Church. It was pre reformation, pre purgatory, pre works based salvation, pre immaculate conception, pre rosary, pre great schism. Every Church calls itself the "Catholic" Church. Both the orthodox and the Protestants also. Catholic literally just means "universal". So we believe in "one Holy, Apostolic and Universal Church"
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These concessions were recorded in St Paul's epistles at the earliest and were documented by St Luke in the 15th chapter of Acts of the Apostles which is new testament canon in of itself as occuring at the Jerusalem council in around 50 AD.
But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, “‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.’ Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.” Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers, with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.” So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words. And after they had spent some time, they were sent off in peace by the brothers to those who had sent them. But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also.
What Jesus said Himself:
Matthew 15:10-11
And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”
Matthew 22:34-40
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
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But like...would Jesus have been cool with that?
Who could say? Not me. Maybe a theologian
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There's an argument out there that Paul was the guy who really started Christianity. He molded it into something that could spread all over the Roman Empire. It's not completely accepted by biblical scholars, but it has a lot of merit.
If you wanna follow Jesus (according to the best of our information about him), you can't be a Trinitarian quasi polytheist who thinks faith, salvation and works are all disjointed and independent. But Paulian doctrines are nothing but that, and the way for a Roman Empire to convert Jesus' message of accountability and righteousness and his Abrahamic monotheism to something more palatable and in-line with their existing beliefs. This includes but is not limited to: a pantheon of three (with a "human God" as one of those three), "consumption of blood and flesh" rituals, the Day of Judgment no longer being one of actual judgment because if you "believe" "Jesus is God" you're automatically saved, whatever Paulian "grace" was...
The Roman Empire is the grandaddy of all Western imperialistic doctrines and my informed guess is that Paul, who didn't actually know Jesus and even in the Bible he gets told off by Jesus' actual followers, was nothing more than an agent of destabilisation and an infiltrator, perhaps sent by the Romans themselves but if not at least used by them to create what we know now as "Roman Catholicism", which is nothing but a deformed, unrecognisable husk of the teachings of big J. Whether this happened this way or more organically is up to debate, whether Jesus' teachings and Christendom are fundamentally different is not, though, that just requires some basic reading comprehension skills.
Yeah. Jesus was explicitly clear that he came specifically for the Jews and that his offer was for them. The only gospel story that even hints at anything is is the story of the Gentile woman who wanted him to hear her daughter; he told her that he came for the Jews, and she replied that even the dogs may eat scraps from the master's table. Jesus was "amazed by her faith" and healed her daughter, but that's the end of the story.
It's only after Jesus' death that Peter had a vision that he interpreted to mean that Gentiles could be accepted as following Jesus too, and then Paul really leaned into it. Most of the rest of the New Testament is written by Paul or one of his disciples.
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It's mostly due to Paul, most Christians are mostly following what Paul wrote. Churches that don't follow Paul, like messianics, are wildly different.
I've met messianic Christians who to me felt Jewish like me but with the Jesus talk.
whoa, I didn't know there were Churches that don't follow Paul. he's one of my biggest issues with Christianity.
I felt like Christianity suffered a lot from so many gentiles streaming in early on without becoming Jews, and by the time it became the religion of Rome it blended with Sol Invictus, Greek Platonism and other Roman mythology, and became incomprehensible. Jesus was Jewish, the Disciples were all Jews, all the context of his teachings only make sense in a context the fresh converts lacked.
I kinda wonder about an alternate universe where a sect of Jews accept Jesus as Moshiach but not as literally God. there'd be no trinity, the parables would go into the Talmud, he'd be seen as a rebbe like Hillel I guess.
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There was no year 0. It was 1 BCE then 1 CE. Just FYI.
Was it though? Like back then?
Back then they didn't use Jesus's birth (or at least, the date Dionysius Exiguus thought was Jesus's birth) as the epoch for counting the years.
Fun fact: year 0 does not exist.
No year "exists", we made up the entire concept of keeping track of "years" in the first place.
we made up all abstract concepts, but some abstract concepts are more real than othe6
Neither do nations or borders. Yet I still have to pay taxes and show my passport at the airport.
At some point, something just exists.
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Year 0 doesn't exist in the BC/AD numbering system, but does exist in the astronomical year numbering system, as well as the ISO 8601:2004 numbering system (and, apparently, in most Buddhist and Hindu calendars, which I didn't know).
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Almost like the only things most Christians do is what they personally like about the religion. The part that tells you to not sleep with a man if you are a man, literally tells you to not wear two types of cloth in the next sentence. You never hear republicans going after the people wearing two types of cloth do you? Never a single word. Not once in the history of the Republican party have they tried to dehumanize people who wear two types of cloth. Funny how that works. Almost like religion is just a tool they use to spread their hate.
Also fuck the people who wrote in scripture that being gay is a sin. I hope those people burn in hell. 2000 years of suffering and killing of gay people because some asshole couldn't be bothered to think for 30 seconds about whether it's actually wrong or not. Probably a good thing because without its several flaws, religion might have came to dominate the world.
Abrahamic religions generally frown upon non-procreative sex. Not to justify their hate, but they generally see sex for pleasure as inherently sinful.
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Without flaws, a doctrine of fairness for all, murder being a sin, and an overwhelming emphasis on compassion, cooperation, loving thy neighbour and turning the other cheek wouldn't be the disease modern religion is. It would be a codification of human values.
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Because Jesus showed them a better way? I thought that was the point of it.
All of Jesus's followers who lived when he did were Jewish as well. They were all guilty of what Jesus was crucified for, going against the established religion of the land (I wouldn't call it apostasy though; that's renouncing God and none of them were doing that). Christianity is/was based on the teachings of Christ; it builds upon Judaism.
That's my understanding anyway. I am not religious. But, I don't think "Christians are not Jews like Jesus was" is a bad thing.
What's wild to me is that today's Jews believe Jesus was this decent guy but not the son of God. Then you have Muslims who believe that maybe he was the son of God, maybe he was just a prophet, but they still follow his teachings, they just lean more into the teachings of Muhammad (peace be upon him) (that's how they say it, or they add "PBUH" which means the same). But guess who the Christians side with politically? I don't get it. But I don't think that (the political thing) has to do with who's more closely aligned with Jesus, I think it's who pays better.
But again, I'm not religious, so I don't support or reject any of them. And of course my understanding of these religions is far less than actual practitioners of said religions.
theoretically, Muslims and Jews should be closer. both believe in one god, rather than a trinity. both reject icons. both follow the dietary laws. both Jews and Arabs descend from Abraham.
maybe the closer you are the more you have to fight about 🤷♀️
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That's because, per Christian doctrine, Jesus created a new covenant with his sacrifice that fulfills and supersedes the old laws, and put a more spiritual mercy/love-driven interpretation on the previous rigid adherence aspects of Jewish laws and traditions before.
Jesus was born Jewish but converted to Christianity in his teens
Christianity wasn’t a thing until 200 years after his death.
Also…Teenjus!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Savior?
If being a Christian means following Jesus’ teachings, I’m pretty sure that makes Jesus the first Christian.
Christ can’t be a “follower of Christ.” The first Christian’s were the Apostles.
If your definition is “follower of Christ”, sure, you can argue that Christ can’t follow himself. My definition is “follower of Christ’s teachings”, and he could definitely follow his own teachings.
So, speaking extra pedantically, Christ taught that he is the lord, and to believe in him and accept him as lord is to be a Christian. He believed he was lord, and he believed in himself and accepted himself as lord, therefore I think Christ would also agree that he was a Christian.
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I mean, the only real difference is that one believes Jesus was the Messiah and the other doesn't. I am pretty sure Jesus straight up told people he was the Messiah so it would be weird if he didn't believe in himself.
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I don't know too much abut religion, but I thought Jesus was supposed to have bashed up the temples due to them operating like banks. I think that'd be evidence of crticising some the prevailing religious organisation.
IIRC it was other people abusing temples to set up markets there, he didn't have problems with the church itself.
It was moreso about them selling the sacrifices. The idea was you couldn't bring your own sacrifice, you'd have to buy one there.
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More ironically western Christians HATE middle-easterners.
If you read the New Testament you would understand why. It goes into this... Everything from Dietary laws to circumcision.
Western Christianity is basically Roman traditions rebranded. Jesus was just a paint coat over it to make it look cooler.
Except the new testament the one about Jesus says something along the lines of nothing you put in your body can taint you. So why would Christians fallo a kosher diet.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Jesus was a reformer of Judaism, and brought in a lot of unorthodox ideas. Plus, if the Gospel accounts are authentic, he was going around telling people he was the foretold Messiah and the Son of God, which isn't typical Jewish teaching.
That's because Jesus didn't tell us to eat a kosher diet or observe Torah strictly. Christians do teach the Bible in churches, the successor to synagogues.
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