The Religious Right in the United States

I mean, sort of?

Jesus flipping tables and scolding merchants is cool, whether he’s the son of God or not.

Imagine if someone became a really popular influencer pushing similar teachings as Jesus, and just started raising shit with their modern millions of followers. Be an interesting WP prompt
- If Jesus was alive today, he'd be crucified again by the Religious Right.
  
  You put into words how I’ve felt for a long time. What is the cause of their blindness?
  
  [Warning: ridiculous existential musings incoming from your question. I lost someone recently and I'm questioning everything.]
  
  What if the Religious Right is some kind of modern-day antithesis to the Tree of Knowledge, its grotesquely interwoven branches of congregants luring others to eat from, and live within, their Tree of True Evil?
  
  What if, at the Fall, Adam and Eve were merely releasing themselves from their creator and captor, from God himself, through eating the forbidden fruit? And that Eden was no utopia, it was really just a prison?
  
  What if God is the bad guy here? And the Religious Right are a reflection of God's actual being and not the God described so perfectly in Scripture?
  
  What if God is now manifesting himself through the Religious Right, rather than Scripture, to convince more of his "children" to return to his "watchful" guard, to be rewarded in Heaven, to live with Him, in Him, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, all Glory is Yours Almighty Father, forever and eeeeveeer??
  
  I mean, he put us here, right? Why can't he just stop the whole thing in its tracks? Or ... Maybe he doesn't have all the power in this sticky Creation situation? Maybe...
  
  Wait. Why does God sound like a scumbag ex?
  
  Guys, what if we have it all backwards?
  
  What if we have a Mom God, and Dad God just made up that bullshit about the rib to explain away any questions about a possible Mom God, let alone ever giving her a written word? (I made her, so I speak for her.)
  
  What if we're in the middle of some sort of nasty interuniversal deity custody dispute??? Maybe Mom God didn't want us to suffer, so we were emancipated, and our entire existence was supposed to be Deity-Free, but Dad God couldn't handle not having control, taxing the shit out out of us with biblical directives even he doesn't follow, instead of receiving some secure attachment to Mom God via knowledge of the physical realities of this world.
  
  Is Dad God just looking to yank all his kids back, and I mean all of them, no matter how willing or unwilling they are to go home with Almighty Daddy? But he can't, because he can't just rapture us outright, or the jig is up, and so we have to live according to see who gets lucky enough to stay at his house and drink all the Holy Mountain Dew and eat all the Holy Hot Pockets we can guzzle down?
  
  What if the Devil isn't a fallen angel at all, but actually Mom God being slandered and literally demonized by Daddy? And Mom God was only here trying to bring us knowledge of our own autonomy and ability, to set us free?
  
  ... Maybe Dad God is only trying to get more child support so he can buy more simulators on Steam and never actually play them because he's greedy and lazy and every other deadly sin he likes to project onto us. I mean, we were made in his image, right? No wonder everyone is capable of inhumanity. Dude wants to keep us locked up. That seems pretty inhumane.
  
  Yet he says he is perfect. "Yeeahhh, everything wrong you filthy humans is because of that damned snake in the tree!!!" No, we were always the way we were, Dad God, that "damned devil" was just trying to help us get out from under God's graceless grace.
  
  We are a forgotten Steam sim, mommy tried, and daddy never loved us.
  
  ^ahhhhh ^im ^so ^high ^sorry ^guys
  
  Edit: apparently I can't spell deity.
  
  I recognize this kind of high. The cannabis thought rabbit hole goes deep. Sometimes it is enjoyable to go down it, other times it isn’t. I’m sorry for your loss, but know Love is out there. No matter the state of the world we can heal from it
  
  You should take a read into some Gnosticism. You'd be interested in what they have to say regarding the Demiurge.
  
  I can only speak for myself and my experience as a former Christian.
  
  For many actually devout Christians, as in Christians who not only read the Bible but do their best to follow its teachings, would probably not believe it if someone went around and said he was Jesus. so regardless of what he said. It's kind of like Half Life 3: they have an "image" of who Jesus is and he would look like an Arab, not the white hippie that we're all used to seeing.
  
  The Christian Right uses religion as a way to justify their behavior, primarily their hatred. They don't call it hatred. They call it God's Love(tm).
  
  These are the assholes who hold up signs saying whatever is immoral because of some random verse in the Bible, as if that should somehow convince people that it's right.
  
  They read Jesus' message for love and understanding and say, "Oh, that's nice! I do that everyday with the people I love!" 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
  
  But then they read Paul's letters about judgment and casting people out and see that as "Well, if I don't agree with you, it must mean I have to do this to you!"
  
  Again, it's not about what the Bible says. It's about what they use it for. They use it to feel good about themselves and to exert their power over others under the guise of Christian Love.
  
  They are blind to it because they don't see their hypocrisy. They are, in fact, pharisees.
- Conservatives would literally call him a communist
  
  Hutterites live like the early Christian church lived and they are effectively communists. They live on communal land, pool all their income together, share all their resources, etc. Engels called them proto communists.
  
  I believe Jewish Shtetls were another early example of humans naturally forming these types of societies.
Cool in concept.

Problem is Jesus is just a fairy tale, like King Arthur or Robin Hood.
- Robin Hood, also cool.
  
  Arthur, naked apologia for feudalism 2/10 would not endorse.
  
  Arthur, naked apologia for feudalism 2/10 would not endorse.
  
  I prefer the view of the peasants in Monty Python. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
  
  Yeah, I mean, just because some moistened tart lobbed a sword at him…
  
  Weren’t they an autonomous anarchical commune or something (or so they thought)?
  
  Anarcho-syndicalist commune.
  
  Thank you!
  
  Fair points.

If only certain things matter, then nothing matters. I prefer a God who lets us be free.

Many religions start out promoting freedom, and evolve to forbidding things and actions
- That's normal: a free society has laws, even anarchism has rules. Freedom is not anomie.
  
  The problem is that many religions, instead of proposing rules in order to better one's spiritual life, or instead of thinking of then as a means to an end, make rules an end in themselves. Rules can be freeing, but if they're their own end, they become confining.
Does your preference matter?

maybe there is no "wrong" way to interpret the text
maybe your view of the response as only immediate is too limiting
just playing devil's advocate here since you made some pretty big assumptions

maybe there is no “wrong” way to interpret the text

If the intended interpretation of a text is "respect women" and you instead interpret the text as "you can own women", then you have interpreted the text incorrectly.
- but there is no way to know what the "intended" interpretation is. and often interpretations beyond the original creator's intent are still valuable and valid
  
  I agree. There is definitely cases where it is impossible to know, but that doesn't mean there isn't wrong ways to interpret something.
  
  You can be wrong without it being possible to know.
  
  how can it be possible to be wrong if there is no definitive correct answer?
  
  Just because it isn't possible to know doesn't mean there isn't a definite correct answer.
  
  A destination can exist without a pathway to it.
  
  okay prove it. otherwise you're just making an assumption.
  
  What did I have for breakfast this day 20 years ago?
  
  You don't know who I am
  
  You don't know where I live
  
  You don't know what is culturally accepted for breakfast for me
  
  You don't have any way to get a recording/CCTV video of me eating on that day
  
  You do not have any pathway to arrive at the correct answer. However there is still a correct answer. I did in fact eat breakfast 20 years ago.
  
  yes but you have to consider that with a religious text there may not have been a single intended interpretation. that's like half the fun of mysticism after all
  
  The problem is still there though, even if there is multiple possible answers.
  
  Name any of the meals I had on this day 20 years ago. I almost certainly had more than one meal that day. But there still isn't a path to get to the correct answer.