gandalfsbignaturals:
because-im-freaking-greed:
demilypyro:
demilypyro:
demilypyro:
I wonder how rich christians keep themselves convinced that they’re not, like, the super villains of real life
“it’s god’s will that I make everything as shitty and lame as possible for everyone everywhere” ???
wasn’t the whole premise of christianity supposed to be that if you do shitty things that you very much are judged
So there was a dude named Calvin who decided that whether you go to heaven or not was decided at the start of time, based on your actions in life, and modern Christians in sects that follow that idea (all the major American ones) decided that meant the things Good Christians do are always good and deserving of heaven
when good people do bad things, its actually good, because theyre good people who are definitely going to heaven, which means they cant do bad things.
when bad people do good things, its actually bad, because theyre bad people who are going to hell, which means they cant do good things.
also, if you werent a good person, you wouldnt be rich, you would be poor. the simple fact that you are rich is proof that god loves you more than all the dirty poors, which means youre a good person and none of the things you do are ever bad.
any attempts to make life better for other people are actually bad because if they were righteous their lives would already be good, and the only reason their lives are bad is because they are bad people. if you do good things for those people, who are bad, then youre actually doing bad things, because youre encouraging them to keep being bad. if they want to be good and have a good life like you, they just need to start being good and get a job and make lots of money, and then theyll be a good person.
american christianity is not built on any actual, reasonable interpretation of their religious text, nor is it founded on any sort of consistent or legible moral code. it is founded on the idea that good people are born good and bad people are born bad and good things only happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people, and any mental gymnastics necessary to make that philosophy work are justified because the alternative would mean actually doing some introspection and changing ones behavior, which is actually the devil talking to you and telling you to stop being good.
the point of it all is not to encourage evil people to be good. its to convince evil people theyre already good and thus deserve all the nice things they have, and to convince good people theyre already bad and thus deserve all the bad things that happen to them.
This is also why American conservatives apply their morals in a completely detached way to their leadership. It does not matter that trump broke and continues to break every concept of sexual morality that they hold, because he is on the Right Side, and is thus a Good Man, and any appearance of evil is by definition fleeting and unimportant. By definition, nothing Trump can do is evil to them.
On the other hand, no matter how good someone on the left may seem, they are categorically evil so what good they do must be a trick designed to make you trust them, or secretly evil somehow (giving the starving food makes them lazy!! Is that what Jesus would want!?)
Now where you might think this breaks down is when a conservative is poor and thus by just world theory deserves it. But how they actually think is that they are poor because of all the evil leftists doing the will of Satan and ruining everything. Because in their religion god can be overpowered by satanic forces of [insert here things their leaders tell them to hate, like gay people]. Think of how many articles conservatives run about gays people killing god and such. And that is why bad things happen to good people.
It is a world view completely detached from reality and the supposed texts of their religion that runs on hate and resentment of the other as a source of religious fervor. People are racist and homophobic or otherwise hateful so hard they have a religious experience about it, and that is where much of american christianity is at.
So a lot of this has some truth to it, but it’s lumping a few different theologies together. For starters, there are a LOT of conservative, Trump-loving bigoted Christians who absolutely hate the Prosperity Gospel and call people like Joel Osteen “false prophets,” so to say that “American Christianity is people thinking they’re good because they’re rich” is a bit reductionist.
Also, the explanation of Calvinism isn’t quite accurate… that theology has nothing to do with a person’s actions, but the idea that some people are the “elect” and pre-destined to go to Heaven while others are just born doomed to Hell. From my experience, you mostly find modern Calvinism in (some) Southern Baptist churches, and if you ever talk to a dude that calls himself a “Reformed” Christian, RUN. Also, anyone who is a fan of John Piper is probably a Calvinist. Don’t look up John Piper if you value your blood pressure.
