I’m at a new job and working on a Saturday. This place is very “Christian-values blah blah blah” and at the end of our work day one of the supervisors is holding a prayer about “please God let this _ go smoothly and thank you for helping us etc.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve sat at a prayer that’s this selfish and asinine. Pretty sure I’ve been in a prayer thanking Jesus for some hot wings.
This kind of prayer was given today. Y’know, the day where some pretty awful things happened in a South American country but who cares about that /s
I don’t get Christians. They say all this nice stuff about their religion but the worship songs are very individualistic, talking about “Jesus saved me”, “my relationship with god”, “thank you God for x”. Never about other people. And of course none of the prayers today were for IDK the people who fucking bombed and murdered today in our bloody quest for oil?!?
Do these people really think their God gives a fuck if their hot wings taste good or if the printer works in the office today? If you really believed in this Devine being wouldn’t you want it to focus on the important things like IDK making sure everyone has food and shelter and maybe making life less miserable for the homeless people? WTF is wrong with Christians? Is this banal kind of “worship” also common in other religions or is this yet another reason to escape the U.S South 🤔
When you lump people into one category you’re punching into space. That was the whole point of my comment. Most people are good and capable of change as I’m sure you have changed at some point. If you want to critique, totally fine: give specific examples. When you generalize like this you’re turning away people who might otherwise be your comrade.
For the record, I’m a white USian, and when people criticize white USians for being ghouls that ruin everything, I don’t wring my hands and say “don’t lump us all in together, some of us are good, if you say that I won’t be your comrade”, I say “yup fuck those crakkkers, death to America”.
That’s what it takes. You fight from the inside.
I see where you’re coming from but in some communities, the church is the only vessel for organization and is the spark to understand how change happens through material support. I’m not here to defend any particular christian institutions, I’m just saying when you call the entire room Nazi’s you’re negating generations of liberation movements whether here in the US or abroad. Of course, its about fighting from the inside. You’re always fighting from inside any institution for any change you want to make. Again, this is not a defense of charity in favor of a larger mass movement, but damn, it feels like you’re being intentionally alienating.
You might be unfamiliar with the Nazi bar analogy - I’m not saying everyone in the bar is a Nazi, but that it will continue to be a Nazi bar until you kick all the Nazis out.
Step 1 is to stop being offended that people call a Nazi bar a Nazi bar.
Step 2 is to admit you have a Nazi problem.
Step 3 is to make the conscious decision that you don’t want your bar to be a Nazi bar anymore.
Step 4 is to kick all the Nazis out.
No, refusing to acknowledge that the room has a bunch of Nazis inside, is what’s negating generations of liberation movements.
I’m not saying that the bar needs to be shut down, just that all the Nazis need to be kicked out. Until the Nazis are kicked out of the bar, it will be referred to as a Nazi bar.
Sorry I’m too stupid. I just like to feed people.
You’re not stupid at all and you have good intentions. It’s a core value of mine that food is a human right that everyone deserves, so we already have a lot of important things in common.
Unfortunately there are power structures that serve to withhold people their human rights, like food. This is the power structure of Capitalism, consisting overwhelmingly of white Christian USians. People deserve to be angry at this power structure, and those of us, like myself, who are part of the imperial core, are right to feel guilt and shame. It’s not that we are inherently bad, but we are a part of the system of oppression. And we don’t need to be punished, but we can take the criticism on the chin and continually strive to take down the system from the inside.
Feeding people is great right now, and the long term goal is to replace the current system with one where no one needs to be fed, because they are already guaranteed that right.
Plenty of specific critiques here that any good Christian would agree with.
To be a good person capable of change means being able to take criticism, especially of being part of a globally oppressive cult. Someone who can’t handle the criticism of being part of a globally oppressive cult, is not a good person, is not capable of change, and was never a potential comrade.
If I can’t say “your Nazi bar is full of Nazis” because that would offend someone so much that they would rather ally with the Nazis instead, they were always a Nazi.