You know how we tell the story about brutally murdering the Son of God? We want to put that on display, all the time, in His House, so He never ever forgets.
God is love!
But don’t forget, Jesus is also God. Fully, but also distinct. So we’re reminding Him about how He had himself killed so that He could forgive us because some lady who didn’t know anything didn’t follow His directions
When you put it that way, it sounds ridicluous.
In Christianity, the crucifixion is the moment of victory. Christ’s sinless death is what allows mankind to be redeemed, and that was the plan all along. So they see the crucifixion as holy, though it is also mourned. It is used as a reminder of the love God has for his people and as a sort of “try to be better” thing.
Pretty weak deity which can’t even forgive the sins they created themselves without all the pageantry. This is why I only worship my TI-83 calculator from middle school. It is capable of completely passive forgiveness, and largely unwilling to resort to damnation under any circumstances.
The explanation I’ve been given is actually kinda cool in a, like, fantasy worldbuilding sort of way. By nature God is perfection, and since Adam and Eve fell short of perfection, mankind is tainted by imperfection. That falling short is sin. (There is some debate about whether God “decides” what is sin, or whether it is some sort of objective nature of God, which I also think is sort of fascinating.) Man needed ways to be absolved from sin to be in communion with God. This largely involved sacrificing animals to cover over sin with blood, and this symbolism is all over the old testament.
Christianity posits that Jesus was both God and Man, combining the two natures. He lived a sinless life, but still faced death (which shouldn’t happen to someone without sin). This causes a sort of divide-by-zero error that cancels out the sin of all who are linked to Jesus through the sacraments (especially baptism and communion). This allows humans to be “in communion with God” without continued animal sacrifice. And now that living a perfect life, which is impossible, is not necessary, Christians should do good things in the world to reflect the grace they’ve been given.
Unfortunately, most Christians know fuck all about their own religion and don’t understand it at a fundamental level, and think it’s their job to go around judging people and telling them to repent.
So God created us imperfect then holds us to an impossible standard and is punishing us for not living up to it? Doesn’t sound very loving. If he had to do it this way because of his nature then he is not omnipotent.
So God created us imperfect then holds us to an impossible standard and is punishing us for not living up to it? Doesn’t sound very loving.
According to the religion, humans were created perfect and chose to sin. Everything since was an effort to redeem them.
If he had to do it this way because of his nature then he is not omnipotent.
Well yeah. Inherently. In fact, I think for any conception of a deity in a religious setting to make sense there must be some kind of limitations on that deity, whether understood by their worshippers or not.
Yes, victory over our enemies!
It’s also a crock of shit that we use to control people. If you’re luck enough to get out of your small town and away from you family like I was, you can deprogram.
No wonder Jesus hasn’t come back. We never miss a chance to remind him of what happened last time
This reminds me of a joke:
" Aliens make first contact with humans. They are peaceful and start a dialogue with us. The subject of religion comes up, and Christianity is described to the aliens and they respond by saying ’ oh yeah we know Jesus. He came comes to visit you too?’
‘Well yes, once, over 2000 years ago.’
To which the aliens reply: ‘That’s weird he visits us every year, stays for about a week for the high feast we throw in his honor. It’s a recreation of what we did for him the first time he appeared. What happened when he came here? Maybe if you recreated whatever that was…’
‘Oh, um, we crucified him.’
‘Oof. Ok. Makes sense now.’
Basically, he has marked us as the bad neighborhood on his map.
Christians with crucifixes are like reporters asking the Irwin siblings about their father’s death in every interview. Why do you want to dwell on the worst thing ever?
I thought it was like the heads-on-pikes thing? Christians are like Klingons right?
Our gods are dead.
We killed them.
They were more trouble than they were worth.metal as fuck
Christianity is the most badass religion.
Do I have that wrong?
Catholicism lore and practices are actually pretty metal if you think about it.
Carry a figure of the dying tortured son of god in a little chain on your neck. Nailed to a cross, speared through the chest, and with a fucking spine crown.
Spikes and a skull tattoos have NOTHING on Catholic paraphernalia.
Then literally eat his flesh and blood in a ritual to commemorate his death.
literally
Literally tho?
Ah! Right! I completely forgot about that.
I was always of the “In remembrance of Me” interpretation. Catholicism gets pretty metal sometimes. Lol
According to Catholics, yes.
OH YEAAAAH…I’ll admit I completely forgot about that.
I was always of the “In remembrance of Me” interpretation.
This is Known. Goth fashion is basically a very involved parody of what Catholic aristocrats used to wear (this is why you get all the “sexy nun” stuff too)
White Jesus from the middle east
Portraying people from the middle east as european helps to normalize zionism.
a very nordic looking jesus too.
Literally the second commandment:
2 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
“You shall not make for yourself…”
That means it’s ok to just buy it, or you can make them and sell them. So long as you don’t make one and keep it for yourself.
also you can build them out of clay. ain’t nothing about fired images
Baby I think we got ourselves a business model! Take that, creator of the universe!
My dad used to beat this fact down my throat when I was a kid. No visual depictions of God/Jesus allowed. I wasn’t allowed to watch The Passion or even Veggietales. But Prince of Egypt was okay.
Veggietales? I didn’t grow up watching it but I thought I read somewhere that the creators actively didn’t want to depict God/Jesus in that? Maybe it’s just because Veggietales is part of the “love each other” version of Christianity and that’s bad and woke.
No symbols allowed or no idols allowed?
I mean any likeness of anything anywhere by the looks of it. So I guess that would include both?
any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
So making fish statues are ok, but don’t worship a fish statue as an idol. I don’t see an issue with making a likeness to something as long as you’re not worshipping it
Apologies, I misunderstood your question. I do wonder if you’ve seen how Catholics treat such depictions. I’d say they worship it or at least use it as an idol.
No, it clearly says: “You shall not make…”, and then adds the reason at the end. It seems God doesn’t even want you making it for any reason, because you might use it to worship. Banning images eliminates the temptation.
I’m not sure that’s the interpretation that Catholics go with, and I don’t think they idolize the statues they make. Either way the qualifier, as I’m reading it, is that they make the thing to worship the thing.
We’re dealing with at least two intervening languages and generations of oral history here. Nitpicking semantics isn’t terribly useful.
True, but also the commandments aren’t actually numbered. IIRC, there are 13 “Shalls” and “Shall nots”. So Catholics lump that section in with the first (no other gods, etc.) while the Protestants make room by joining “don’t covet wife/property”. There’s arguments to support both sides when looking at the historical context but on that specific issue I’d lean toward the Catholic interpretation making more sense considering god is telling people to make statues shortly after (Exodus 25:18). Either way it’s silly to be arguing over rules that bronze age people invented.
So no Cat pictures? This is not a world I want to live in.
You shall not bow down or serve them****
One pedophile argues with another:
My pedophiles are better than your pedophiles! Why? It says so right here in my holy book!
Too real for some folks here, obviously.
Anybody that’s read the Bible knows Jesus was a White man from New Jersey.
With blue eyes and blond hair
And then there’s korean Jesus.
Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are all tax free! They get tax benefits that no “non-profit” can match.
These are all unfathomably wealthy organizations. Their fundamentalists all despise us (us being not them). Get a job
Jesus returns, looks around at crosses everywhere.
“Fuck me. I’m glad I didn’t die accidentally drowning in manure!”
Can’t sell as much merchandise without a face to go along with the name.
WWJD? SELL SELL SELL!!!
Mo was Asian
The iconoclasts were on the same page
The Christian bible says exactly the same thing, Christians just ignore it.
Thy shall not make graven images
Top part was like a 7 second duckduckgo search…
