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Notes -
I posted this on a progressive Christian subreddit yesterday, only to have it removed a few hours later. Frankly, I don't know what I expected to gain from speaking my mind there, because aside from a few people who asked genuine questions, everyone else was annoyed. Probably should have just posted it here.
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Title: Emotionally drained by politics
For some context, I consider myself to hold left-leaning Christian and political viewpoints. I have gone through a journey of faith that has led me to re-evaluate conservative teachings and doctrine, which I no longer support or believe in. One of the most important values for me is mutual respect. I react negatively towards people who don't actively listen and hear out people who's values and beliefs are different than theirs. To be clear, active listening isn't tantamount to listening to agree, but rather listening to understand. It appears to me that this kind of listening is severely lacking not only in Christian circles, but in much of society today. I also hold above all other Scripture, the Great Commandment, and believe with my whole heart that loving your neighbor as yourself means loving every neighbor.
It of course bothers me greatly when I see Donald Trump calling Kamala Harris "mentally unwell since birth" or Donald Trump and JD Vance proclaim as fact that Haitian migrants in Springfield, OH, are eating dogs. But it also bothers me when I see pro-Palestinian activists circulating posters depicting a university president with devil horns and missiles (https://www.courant.com/2024/09/19/uconn-leaders-refuse-to-meet-with-pro-palestinian-protest-group-following-grotesque-antisemetic-imagery-depicting-university-president/), or those times when both Marjorie Taylor Green and Jasmine Crockett go back and forth taking personal jabs at each other, or even something like Tim Walz telling JD Vance to "get off the couch" and debate him. From my lived experience, acting in the manner that some of our politicians do is not fruitful and is not loving.
I recognize that the policies of the GOP are dangerous to minority groups in this country. I recognize that a Donald Trump presidency would threaten American democracy. But at the same time, I cannot help but feel like politics as a whole has become more about being right instead of making our country better. And part of making it better, I feel, is listening to not only people who hold the same values and beliefs, but also to people who don't. It appears to me that politicians are very quick to assume that all people who support the opposing party live in a vacuum, so they don't bother to hear them out. I have not seen a single Democrat or Republican candidate try to build bridges across the aisle in an effort to win over their vote. It seems like they're all cooped up in their respective echo chambers, only really caring about what it takes to get elected and nothing more.
I've actually decided not to vote at all this election. Respectfully, I am not looking to have my mind changed on this, as I've already heard and considered most of the usual arguments for why I should ("it's your civic duty" "Trump will win if you don't", "Vote the issues, not the person", etc). I live in a solidly blue state in New England. My congressperson has been in office for the past 15 years and has always won by a wide margin. Sure, there are my state and local offices, but I'm not convinced that anyone who's running would actually listen to the ideas that I have to make out state better. I think they're too busy catering to the interests of the party and wealthy donors.
I don't know, maybe what I'm seeking with this post is more understanding about my frustration than actual guidance. It's very hard for me to want to be invested in politics when it seems like all everyone wants to do is yell and scream at each other.
TL:DR This election season, due to all the personal attacks and inflammatory rhetoric and lack of mutual respect, has left me very politically disillusioned to the point where I don't want to vote anymore. Any understand or gentle guidance is appreciated.
The story was cats.
It's a matter of taboo. If it's normal in Haiti to eat cats or dogs, I would expect a non-filtered-for-assimilativeness population of Haitians in the United States to have members who catch and eat cats or dogs, just as I would expect them to catch geese, which they have done. Also deer, which I only speculate about, but we wouldn't find it expressly unusual for a foreigner living in the US to hunt and eat deer, and this returns to the point above. If it's normal for them to do it there, then given 20,000 normal Haitians moved to the US, the probabilistic assumption is they have done it here.
What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself?
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I think politics is exhausting. And I’ve said before, if the systems were working as designed working fairly well, I really think most people would be really tuned out most of the time. It’s just that I believe that we’re in the late Empire period of the Anglican-American Empire (which I content started with the sinking of the Spanish Armada) so none of our systems actually work properly. We’ve become a decadent society and our state’s competence and capacity have shrunk enough that you are stuck trying to wrestle a system you into something like competence just to get the basic things done. And I don’t think it will get better quickly because most of our systems (including BTW the institutional church) are weakened and often barely functional.
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Well then don’t vote if you don’t want to? A group of strangers on the internet, almost none of whom agree with you, is not a support group for not doing something.
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Have you considered the possibility that you are wrong about your perceptions of various politicians or political philosophies?
The feeling your feeling is exhaustion from trying to hold some incompatible ideas in your head.
Maybe Trump is not a threat to democracy, maybe conservatives aren’t being mean to people violating our federal border laws, maybe Trumps policies are absolutely in no way a threat to minority groups.
I think there is a mental tax to hearing these sorts of engineered slogans all the time, trying to internalize them as if they were true, and not being able to create a coherent understanding of the world which allows them to be.
I think that’s the burnout you’re feeling. You’re being completely bombarded by increasingly impossible to square lies, and keeping track is tiring you out. I could see this being especially tiring if you live in a place where accidentally saying the sky is blue will get you in trouble socially.
Maybe so, deep down, but when I see how incoherent he is at public speaking, or read the names he calls his adversaries, or spreading rumors about Haitians in Springfield, OH, eating dogs, I can't help but feel like he shouldn't be anywhere near the White House.
This an accurate summary, thank you.
You seem particularly upset by the Haitians in Springfield eating pets story. We're you also upset by the Russian collusion, or pee dossier stories?
I think there were a couple elements to the Hatian story that gave it the legs it had. There was a woman arrested while apparently eating a cat, though in Canton not Springfield and she isn't Hatian. There was a 911 call reporting 4 Hatians stealing geese from a park. There was a viral Facebook post purporting to describe 3rd or 4th hand about a lost cat found field dressed hanging from a tree. The memes of Trump saving kittens and ducks were sharable because cats and the internet.
It seems to me that this is one of those misinformation stories that's only horrible when it's my evil out-group doing it. When it's the righteous and good in group repeating Russian collusion, pee dossier or Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation, disinformation it's OK.
Just to steel man the eating pets story:
These are people who are desperately poor, who come from a place which is one of the poorest in the entire world. It doesn’t seem out of the question that they would need to be told not to eat local dogs, cats, ducks, and geese.
There are plenty of Americans who poach deer or raccoons or squirrels or whatever else they can find who are also desperately poor and live in rural parts of Montana.
There were local reports that this was happening. It doesn’t seem like a big stretch that it would be, the locals were saying it was, and Trump repeated their reports.
If we are both sides-ing this: it is heinous the types of lies that Democrats are telling people about maternal healthcare. Their intentional ambiguity about abortion or what it means is leading to doctors not knowing what they’re allowed to do, and leading to mothers who think that they are going to be denied healthcare while they’re having a miscarriage.
This is leading to women engaging in extremely dangerous behavior, which the Democrats then use as fodder for their power games. If they would simply stop lying about the state of maternal healthcare, and stop lying about what their desires WRT abortion, they would have a net positive effect on the healthcare of women. But instead they are willing to let women put themselves in danger at sort of unwilling martyrs. It’s disgusting.
Poaching deer sure. Squirrel and racoon may not even be poaching. Some states have no limits on varmit animals though you'd need permission from the landowner on private property.
This seems the most likely to me. Combined with the Canton women who ate the cat.
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Upset isn't quite the word I would use to describe how I feel about it. Its more like... dumbfounded, that they would make such an incredulous claim. It doesn't surprise me that Trump would (allegedly) collude with members of the Russian government, because he strikes me as a person who would do whatever it takes to win. I don't think Trump can stand losing because he views losing as total defeat.
Though, at this point, what the hell do I know?
Do you believe this claim? I believe we've high quality evidence that this was manufactured at the behest of those working if not on behalf of the Clinton campaign, working independently while also working for the Clinton campaign.
This still sounds like boo-outgroup. That dastardly Trump is the sort to collude with Russia to win.
Poor Hatians would never eat a cat.
At best I'm reasonably confident a Hatian in Springfield, OH hasn't eaten a cat it the trailing 6 months. I would be less confident that no Hatian has never eaten a cat anywhere.
I'm also less confident that no European-American has never eaten a cat anywhere, but that's no reason to say "they're eating the cats" about that group.
If the claim were Europeans are using cat pelts as a traditional remedy for arthritis?
Surely we'd be able to point a finger at at least one smoking gun case if the traditional remedy claim was relevant?
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Neither ‘recent immigrants misunderstand cultural norms enough to eat pets’ nor ‘a presidential candidate colluded with an enemy nation to increase his chances of winning’ are Bigfoot-is-the-babydaddy level implausible. Trump repeated claims from a local and democrats repeated claims from elsewhere. Both of these claims are probably false, but there’s not one that’s clearly much worse than the other.
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Incredulous? Have you been to Haiti?
My favorite response to this on Twitter;
“In 2023 there was footage of Haitians eating people, and the thought that they might eat cats is too offensive to consider?”
Bush meat is a real thing. Recent immigrants from countries that eat bush meat doing what they did in their home countries before they are acculturated to their new environment is not even remotely shocking to consider. I’d be more amazed if it didn't happen.
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I know you didn't ask for guidance but how you're feeling is clearly a function of how plugged in you are. Do you use social media? Watch news daily? How much and for how long? I ask because...
...this is not unprecedented in American politics. The best (and frankly the funniest) examples are Jefferson v. Adams (1800) and Jackson vs. Adams (1828). That's not to say I condone it, but rather that it's not unique to this election, or even to American politics and history. For all our technological and scientific progress we're still human.
I've been cutting back significantly since the start of the year. I've dwindled down posting on Reddit to about once a month. I have a site blocker on all my devices that blocks it. When I do override it, it's so I can view non-politcial content, and even then its only for 30 minutes at a time. I'm not on any other social media service, either. No Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, you name it. I do watch a lot of YouTube, but like how I handle Reddit now, its mostly for non-political content. I don't watch the news, and I don't even have linear TV. Until recently, I would make the rounds on more neutral news sites, like the AP, Reuters, and NPR, but now I've just paired it down to a local news site that picks up national and international stories from the AP/Reuters wires. I'm trying to fight our society's incessant need to have the most late-breaking news at our fingertips.
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I have to give you points for sheer balls making this post. I'm still not sure if it's genuine or intended as Motte-bait. Lines like the below are almost tropes of exactly what not to say on the Motte:
But, again, I have to commend your ... bravery?
Politics isn't a good line of work. There are two primary categories of politicians in my view; 1) True believers who actually hold a sense of duty and want to work for their constituents and ideals. In one sense, these can be the more dangerous group because they might actually hold crazy ideas as God's Own Truth. In another sense, what you see is what you get. 2) Grifters and "Company Men" who love getting in the political mud and doing dirty work. A lot of these folks, frankly, failed at other careers in life but come with enough moral flexibility that they'll happily do whatever they need to to keep striving up that ladder. My favorite example here is Terry McAuliffe. Read his bio. This man was destined to be a douchebag.
With that heady mix, you're never going to have "discourse" you like. The task becomes trying to move your level of analysis to a different level in order to better understand the mud-slinging nonsense happening. The main thread here is "The Culture War." This is important. The de facto stance of the Motte is that understanding larger culture movements, norms, changes etc. is far more informative than focusing on the yelling matches happening in Congress and elsewhere. To your point about "frustration", culture warring (done well, as it is here) is often far less frustrating than pure politics argumentation.
Here's a question that can maybe be of help; if you believe that you are not alone in your frustration (which is true), and that a whole lot of people feel similar, then why do so many more people continue to engage in political firefights? Are they simply demented non-humans? Or they radical zealots? Or are they mostly normal people?
I can assure you, I'm not trying to bait anyone. I'm fully aware statements like that aren't well received here, but I came to to The Motte because folks here are genuinely insightful and responsive to what I have to say. I came here to escape Reddit, essentially. I was tired of the echo-chambers. Sometimes out of shear desperation to be heard, I post over there thinking someone would understand where I'm coming from, but it never seems to be fruitful. At least here, people are thoughtful and respectful, even if we disagree. I don't have much to lose, at this point.
I think that the people you see out there engaged in political firefights represent a small fraction of political viewpoints. The loudest people in the room are the ones waging the culture war. I think that most people are more concerned about getting up, going to work, putting food on their/their family's table, their finances and their social life than they are with waging the culture war. The people out there making the most noise, I believe, are drowning out the voices of those who would take a more gentle and pragmatic approach to politics. You should know that I'm an introvert. I tend to keep my thoughts to myself and only speak when I feel confident I can put together a cohesive statement of opinion. I also tend to regress if a conversation gets too heated. So, my personal biases are definitely influencing how I feel about this.
These sort of "the majority are reasonable" arguments understandably pop up quite often, and I have many problems with them, but here I'll just say this portrayal is far too flattering of them. The majority won't even stay friends with someone who the loudest have called out as a wrongthinker, and that's a necessary condition for any kind of gentle approach to politics.
And that's the key aspect that I feel needs to change. I think the more we shut people out who are "wrongthinkers", the more we group each other into group-think silos, the less compromise and progress we make as a society.
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1 - Double check your formatting. You accidentally looped your response to a quote into the quote itself.
This is fair and probably correct. It raises the question, however, about what "pragmatic" means. I fear that a lot of "pragmatic" politics involves people coming together to workout their policy issues and compromising for a balance approach to ... doing something.
As a constitutional conservative, the number one thing I don't want the Government to do is anything. Sure sure, normal caveats like providing for Defense and common infrastructure goods. But the point remains, a lot of the culture war has to do with the fact that people feel out of control of their own lives because of a slow, Long March of the institutions dating back to about the Great Depression with antecedents going as far back as the Civil War.
"Pragmatic Politics" sounds really intuitive and good, but it assumes that political activity (really, State activity) is something that should, ought to, and will happen at scale. I'd contend that everyone in one issue or another is against this. Some people don't want the Gov't to interfere with the internet, for others its food and diet, guns, abortion etc. So you can see how, all of a sudden, "pragmatic politics" slams into closely held discrete-issue beliefs. Then, nothing gets done because you're trying to hold a meeting in the middle of a minefield.
Well, see, there's something we can find agreement on. I would prefer a more limited government as well, maybe not as far as suggesting we abolish the FDA for example, but I would definitely agree with you that State and federal governments have become too big, especially as it pertains to interstate commerce. I would love to see Wickford v. Filburn get overturned. I tend to be pro-2A as well, with caveats for universal background checks, training, and safe storage. I'm happy that both Harris and Walz openly talk about how their firearms owners.
I see what you're saying about "pragmatic politics". Like, it could easily go down the slippery slope of "my issue is the only one that matters" and then nothing gets done. I agree with the notion that politics should involve compromise. But if no one is willing to compromise, what then? And that's where I'm getting hung up. In everything that I've learned in life, you don't get your needs met or your voice heard by throwing out snarky one-liners or calling someone Hitler or labeling a university president as the Devil or what have you. It just doesn't make sense to me.
What then? Status quo.
And this was exactly, precisely, and explicitly what the founders intended. Government is incredibly powerful. It's like a mountain. If a mountain shifts in massive ways haphazardly, we call it an earthquake and it's bad. We want the mountain to mostly do nothing unless everyone super-duper agrees on it. Gridlock is the de-facto state of The State.
The problem arises when the State is involved in everything and, therefore, gridlock spreads to everything. This is the housing crisis, this is lack of energy independence, this is the wild "need" for college degrees for jobs that don't need them, this is "certifications" for hairdressers in some states.
Compromise is elusive because built into it is a positive sum assumption. In reality, a lot of political contentious are pretty much zero sum. Taxes are higher or lower. Economists can quibble about which taxes are "good" in the grander scheme of things but, in the immediate, somebody somewhere is paying more than they were before. They have less money with which they can decide to do things.
Again, "pragmatic politics" falls apart because it implies that the State should be doing things and that, if the state cannot do things, that is in and of itself a bad outcome (hence your rejoinder "But if not is willing to compromise, what then?"). To put a fine point on it: I don't want to need the State to function in order to live my life. Your assumption has built into it that we, as a society, absolutely need a well functioning State in order to live our lives. That's paternalism at best and authoritarianism at worst.
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Are you looking for non-progressive opinions? If so I will share my thoughts.
Loving your neighbor means loving other Christians, and specifically precludes false Christians. ReligionForBreakfast explains this well in his recent “the most misunderstood parable of Jesus” analysis video. The historical evidence is overwhelming that Samaritans were considered co-religionists, and the textual evidence points to Samaritans being the “far case” of neighbor status. The Parable of the Samaritan defines who is a neighbor, and the further case of neighbor is a righteous co-religionist who isn’t totally aligned with your practices. God calls you to love your fellow Christians as yourself; and He calls you to love your brothers the most (those in your church, denomination, friends). While Christ does say to “love your enemies”, the Sermon on the Mount involves exaggeration to shock us into dispositional perfection: we do not actually cut off our hands when our hand leads to sin, or pluck out our eye when our eye leads to sin, and so the commands cannot be taken as literal practical rules.
It’s crucially important that we understand who are neighbors are. If you extend who you consider to be your neighbor beyond what God has established, you aren’t being “more good”, you are being bad. You are committing the worst sin, which is failing to love God with your mind and failing to obey his commandments. If you fail to obey Christ’s commandments then, according to John, you never knew him.
The argument in that video falls apart when he assumes the man who is beaten is an Israelite. Jesus never states this, he is just identified as a man (ανθρωπος) who is stripped of his clothes and knocked unconscious, being rendered effectively unidentifiable. The Samaritan would have been a far case neighbor to the listeners of Jesus' parable, but to the man in the story, it is deliberately ambiguous. If Jesus wanted this to be about Jewish relations, he would have identified the man as a Jew.
He also tries to gloss over all of pre-reformation interpretation as allegorical and while there is a ton of allegory in those early writings, No less than St. Jerome (347-420) in his Homily on Psalm 14 lays out a pretty bog standard reading that is scarcely different than you'd hear at Sunday School class: 'Some think that their neighbor is their brother, family, relative or their kinsman. Our Lord teaches who our neighbor is in the Gospel parable of a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho…. Everyone is our neighbor, and we should not harm anyone. If, on the contrary, we understand our fellow human beings to be only our brother and relatives, is it then permissible to do evil to strangers? God forbid such a belief! We are neighbors, all people to all people, for we have one Father.'
He is identified as an Israelite with “from Jerusalem to Jericho”. Jerusalem did not have a large foreign population. Jericho was a major trading hub used by Jews. While Jerome’s interpretation is his interpretation, it’s neither the oldest nor the most traditional. The oldest and most common interpretation in the early church is the see Christ as the Samaritan. Just per wiki,
It’s better to reason about what the parable means. If the purpose is to abrogate the command to love neighbors and replace it with everyone, then that would be specified. If everyone is to be our neighbor, then that would also be specified. If the Samaritan is in the story only as a moral exemplar, then there would be no reason to specify his identity, and indeed most parables do not specify identities. The Samaritan is the third identity introduced of three, and all three are “Israelite”, and so if the purpose is to tell us identities don’t mean anything, then the identity of Pagan or Canaanite would be introduced. But God is God, and every word has meaning. “Jerusalem to Jericho” is homeland; Samaritan is the furthest edge case of religious brother. Remember, the answer put to test Jesus was “who is my neighbor”. While I suppose you could argue something like “my neighbor is the one who behaves like the Samaritan to me”, I think it’s more reasonable to assume that the identifiers specifically placed in the parable are there for a reason.
Allegorical interpretation was never done in a vacuum, it was something that existed alongside other methods of interpretation, traditionally one of four meanings acknowledged by early Christians. If are going to respond to the author of the Vulgate with 'That's just like your opinion man' I'm not sure you are taking this seriously. The reasoning about what this parable means has been done for millennia and caring for strangers is an interpretation by no means a recent innovation. When your non-progressive take involves reversing 2000 years of Christian teaching and practice I shudder to think of what you consider progressive.
It is a story about who reads the law better, and I agree with you and the video that all three should be regarded as law followers. The love God, love your neighbor formulation as a summary of the Law was not a new innovation, it was a oft repeated gloss of Leviticus 19:18 and Deut 6:5. The issue then and now is that our glosses become our totalities. Our law expert has given the pithy Sunday School answer that everyone knows. What our Lawyer doesn't want to acknowledge that the discourse he pulls his answer from also contains "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." (Lev 19:33-34). This is why the identity of the victim is obscured in the parable. Jesus isn't teaching anything new here, he is calling out the failure of the Jews to live up to their own Law, using the example of a law follower furthest from the centers of power. There is nothing to abrogate because the command is already there, Jesus is just mindful of the jots and tittles others forget.
Now, to be fair, in modern times the parable it's self has been pulled from its context to support things that would be unimaginable, especially in regards to the behavior of the guests. Loyalty and honoring the host on the part of the stranger are a given. Betraying one who has shown you hospitality was the gravest of sins, What Jesus accuses Judas of in John 13:18. Dante rightly places them in the deepest pits of hell.
The parables specifically are interpreted allegorically by every early theologian. Jesus effectively demands an allegorical interpretation in Matthew 13. Also, the anagogical and moral analyses are usually intwined with allegory.
Again, the dominant reading of the parable was not that everyone counts as your neighbor. That is a minority viewpoint. Do you believe that every opinion of Jerome is correct? For instance, in his homily 35 on psalm 108, do you agree that every Jew is accursed because they bear collective blood guilt for killing Jesus? I’m excited for you reply — you give him full authority on being the author of the Vulgate, and you’re all about taking him seriously. (Feel free to copy my reply of “Jerome’s interpretation is Jerome’s interpretation”. I won’t judge you. But you can’t say he is wrong — after all, you note he wrote the Vulgate).
Most of the early conclusions are not that everyone is your neighbor. Even more importantly, the conclusion doesn’t make sense upon careful inspection of the parable.
In Leviticus the strangers are supposed to be circumcised and follow every single law of an Israelite. “But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you”.
Note that Jerome's conclusion to his statement about Jews bearing the collective guilt for Christ's death is that Christians must abhor violence and pray for the salvation and forgiveness of all Jews: "That is the Lord's weapon; that is our weapon, too, prayer. If ever anyone should persecute us and hate us, let us say likewise: In return for my love, they gave me calumny. But I, what did I do? I prayed. In order to get the better of them? God forbid; does the Lord pray for one in order to vanquish him? Why did He say: 'but I prayed'? What was His prayer? 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing's"
But really, Jerome's correctness is entirely besides the point. The point is that he was prominent, and bringing up another opinion that he held a prominent position on only reinforces my point. Its not that any church father was right about everything, its that the idea that loving your neighbor involved anyone you encounter was framiliar, not foreign to early Christians, and its in no way refuted by allegorical interpretations existing alongside it either. Rather as you rightly say, it was intertwined with the allegory. For example, in Homiles on The Gospel of Luke 34.2 Origen tells us that:
"He [the Lord] teaches that the man going down was the neighbor of no one except of him who wanted to keep the commandments and prepare himself to be a neighbor to every one that needs help. This is what is found after the end of the parable, “Which of these three does it seem to you is the neighbor of the man who fell among robbers?” Neither the priest nor the Levite was his neighbor, but—as the teacher of the law himself answered—“he who showed pity” was his neighbor. The Savior says, “Go, and do likewise."
Right after this he launches into allegorical interpretation, which also has a universal bent:
"The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience. The beast is the Lord’s body. The pandochium (that is, the stable), which accepts all who wish to enter, is the church. The two denarii mean the Father and the Son. The manager of the stable is the head of the church, to whom its care has been entrusted." (34.3)
All this talk about a dominate reading is backwards projection of modernist legal theory onto people who just didn't frame the Bible using those concepts. The assumption that their use of allegory means that they rejected other interpretations just doesn't hold when you actually read what they wrote.
Yes, strangers needed to be circumcised to celebrate passover and circumcision for Christian converts was a topic of hot debate when Paul was writing. Note that he dropped that requirement. Hospitality was never supposed to be limitless. Guests had to follow the laws of the land, and give honor to their hosts. Liberationist readings of the parable fail because they ignore any expectation that would be placed on guests.
But this universal welcome and hospitality is a well established part of the faith, starting from Exodus and going through the church fathers. The fact that this reading of the parable doesn't make sense to you but did to the overwhelming tide of Christianity might give one pause. You say that Jesus demands an allegorical interpretation of his parables, but point to a novel historical critical youtube take as the only evidence of your position. If you want it both ways, that's fine. You can even have new revelation if you want. Maybe Moroni has issued you some new tablets for your new pro-social religion. You can do it, but what you have is another progressive religion, something you've invented to get what you want. Which is a strange place to end up with what was supposed to be a non-progressive take
Christian perfection is praying for enemies, yes. There’s nothing novel about that. But enemies are still enemies. And enemies are not strangers, and strangers aren’t neighbors, and neighbors aren’t brothers. Jerome telling us to pray for enemies is irrelevant to the questions at hand. The reason I bring up Jerome’s view on Jews is because obviously you don’t share that view. No one shares that view today. So your criticism that I had the audacity to disagree with Jerome is instantly rendered void and actually pretty humorous. You also disagree with Jerome. You disagree with multiple pages he wrote about Jews being cursed with bloodguilt, and I disagree with a few sentences in which he declares that the whole world is his neighbor. So let’s move past ol’ J-Dawg and focus on other evidence?
As evidence for this you quote Jerome again. As an example, Origen does not conclude from the parable that everyone is now your neighbor.
The early church had a welfare system reserved for themselves. If they were not Christian, they were not welcome at the Eucharist (originally: “love feast”). If they sinned without repentance, Christians were commanded never to eat with them. If a widow wanted the financial charity of the church, they had to prove good Christian behavior to earn it. And in the Epistles, we have maybe eight passages commanding Christians to love brothers-in-faith, and little about neighbors. This is remarkable: if the apostles believed that they should love everyone as themselves, why do we only see an emphasis on brotherly love? Brothers would be but a part in the love for neighbor. The logical argument is that the neighborhood has become the Christian Brotherhood, just as Israel has become Christendom.
The idea that Christians should love strangers as themselves is the Achilles heel of Christianity. It has caused irreparable harm to Christianity worldwide and ushered in a world of absurd progressive theology and ultimately harm. It naturally leads to absence of brotherly love, because there can be no exceptional love for brothers if you are obliged to love strangers as yourself. The heart of Christianity is brotherly love. God Himself, as a Man, gave special love to his friends and made them brothers. He did not give special love to strangers, though he healed them upon request and when passing through. He stopped what he was doing to raise up Lazarus because he loved Lazarus particularly. And see here —
You completely missed the point. You are arguing ought, but you are ignoring what is. You have to contend with the evidence, but you just laugh and say 'I disagree'. I don't care that you disagree with the history of Christianity, I care they you think you can rewrite it. Universal care for the stranger has been part of the faith since the Torah, continues through the church fathers, was never rejected or repudiated in the pre-modern era, it recognized reasonable boundaries, had the goal of making the stranger a brother, and was in fact a hallmark of the faith.
Origen says one must "prepare himself to be a neighbor to every one that needs help". If that isn't a conclusion that says help everyone that needs help I'm not sure what you are reading. We can't get anywhere if you keep ignoring the evidence.
Christianity would have gotten no where without the care for the poor and outcast, they fed and clothed them before they became Christians. This is the historical record. the disconnect isn't in the welcome, its that lack of formation in modern times that has become a problem, coupled with the embrace of secular materialism. You love the stranger by making them like yourself. If they reject that, you send them on their way, if they abuse or exploit your generosity, they sin like Judas and we pray that they can find forgiveness in this life. But that doesn't mean you don't help them from get go. You absolutely need to make sure your welfare system is secure against abuse, that's in the Bible too, but that doesn't abrogate Leviticus. But tossing out the scripture and abandoning the historical practice of the church because you disagree with it just makes you a different kind of progressive theologian.
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That video mentions Jews and even antisemitic tropes several times. It does not say that loving your neighbor means loving other Christians; Jews are not Christians.
In ReligionForBreakfast 17:20, the conclusion is that “the parable is about insiders and how things should work for insiders”. 17:28, “the Samaritan is being used as a limit concept”. In 17:42, that the Samaritan is the edge case to specify the broader concept of the people of Israel.
To understand how this applies to Christians requires Christian assumptions. These are difficult to succinctly explain to non-Christians but widely agreed upon in mainstream Christian traditions. The stories in the Gospel are for the edification of Christians, not Jews; the elements of the story involving temples and scribes and Pharisees are not stuck in the first century, but apply universally; Christians are the Chosen People, with those who do not accept Christ being cast aside. When Christ offers a teaching to his community it is accepted that this teaching is for his proclaimed community of followers, with the lessons applying today. In other words, the gospel lesson mentioning Samaritans apply to what the Samaritan represents for Christians today, and interpreting otherwise would be a serious misinterpretation (“beware of the teachings of the Pharisees”).
Okay, so you're telling me that a parable that is about Jews, mentions Jews, and whose analysis says that Christians have misinterpreted it because of antisemitism, is trying to say that Jews do not count as your neighbors for the purpose of loving your neighbor? I'm not even asking you about Samaritans or Pharisees.
(And even if that's what you think it means, that's not what the video you linked thinks it means.)
You’re not making the compelling critique that you think you are making. There are things you have to know first before you can understand the parable. (“This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: ‘You will indeed hear but never understand’”).
A major plot of the New Testament is that the disbelieving Jews are severed from God and the gentiles are grafted in. But that takes place at the end, and this parable takes place earlier. So how do we understand it?
We can’t understand it as applying to modern Jews, because that is the religion of the Pharisees centered on the Talmud which denies Christ. The New Israel for Christians is about Christ. Indeed, no theologian has ever interpreted it as actually involving present-day Jews and Samaritans. Maybe some silly ones today, but no Church Father.
Christians read the parables as applying universally, involving moral lessons and symbols. Disagreeing with this fine if you don’t consider yourself Christian, but nonsensical if you’re trying to understand the readings under Christian assumptions (the purpose of the original OP). This is shown in Matthew 13.
We are left with a parable which applies today in form and symbol, but using context from the first century (before the Atonement and before Christ becomes the full-fledged mediator between God and Man). So who are today’s “Samaritans” which act righteously? Christ somehow answers the question “who is my neighbor” here, and we have to understand it as applying today. There must be a neighbor category; who fits the category?
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I disagree. It's quite obvious that Christ viewed himself as the Messiah of the Jewish people and the Samaritans were the outgroup for his Jewish followers. He explicitly compares the Jewish PMCs with the Samaritan and shows that actions are more important than earned or inherent prestige.
Imagine Mirza Ghulam Ahmad telling Muslims that a mufti and a sayyid didn't help a man, but a Christian did. Other Muslims don't consider Ahmadiyya Muslims and maybe the religions will diverge, but Mirza Ghulam Ahmad considered himself one.
The historical evidence goes against the notion that Samaritans were the “out group”. The most consistent enemy of the ancient Jews were the Canaanites and the contemporaneous enemy was the idol-worshipping Pagan nation. The Samaritans were as close you could get to Jewish without being fully Jewish. The Mishna mentions that they could celebrate liturgically together. In speaking to the Pharisees (a sect), Christ has a number criticisms and calls them devil-worshippers. In speaking to the Samaritans, there is no criticism of their theology and just a mild “salvation has come from the Jews”. The idea that the Samaritans were hated and despised by ancient Jews isn’t really evidenced. And God, being God, wouldn’t say something and mean something else. If he wanted to use a despised group, he would do so in the clearest way, and if he wanted to use a neighboring group, he would do so in the clearest way. If the very notion of a neighbor was to be abolished, which is what the outgroup theory implies, he would treat it the way he abolished divorce (“you have heard it said… but truly: …”; or “because of the hardness of your hearts…”). Instead, Christ himself says that we must love our neighbor, and the usage of “neighbor” must mean something, otherwise he would say “everyone”.
You're confusing the enemy with the outgroup. I was using Scott's definition of "proximity plus small differences". Just enough differences to not count as "one of us".
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Why can't it mean to literally love your neighbor? I've seen enough arguments here that one should care about one's physical neighbors before the fargroup. You're not God, you can't meaningfully love everyone, so love your neighbor.
In a word: globalism. “Love your neighbor” was a prescription written ~400BC to an audience whose physical neighbors were co-congregants and cousins in a mostly pastoral lifestyle. The prescription becomes less reasonable in cosmopolitan or exiled contexts. Loving your neighbor is a rule with utility when you’re on the same page with values, authorities, honors and punishments. But what if your neighbor is some random guy? I think if we consider love in its actual biological function — the syncing together of identity and cares between two creatures, the allocation of cognitive and emotional resources to ensure the other’s good, having its origin in filial and procreative and beneficiary roles — we see that love is precious and holy and shouldn’t be metaphorically thrown to swine. Many men and women have been irrevocably hurt by loving the wrong person or thing.
It appears that you are just using Jesus's words as a jumping off point for a claim you want to make rather than seriously engaging with what He meant. He tells the parable in response to a troublemaker asking for a rigorous definition of whom he needs to love as his neighbor, and after telling the story he asks "which of these was a neighbor to him?" - in other words, trying to limit to whom the commandment applied and to whom it didn't was the wrong spirit in which to approach it.
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If Jesus didn’t intend to have a message to Jews why did he say in Matthew 15: 24 “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”?
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I'm not necessarily looking for guidance from a progressive perspective, nor was I really looking for a conversation about what "loving your neighbor" means. I'm quite convicted in my position on the latter and not really interested in having my mind changed on that.
Okay, but it seems integral to your progressive philosophy. You might feel better considering that Christ does not want you to love random strangers or, in this case, Haitians who practice voodoo.
Yes, it is, and respectfully, I'm not looking to have my mind changed on it.
Are there some relevant things you are willing to have your mind changed on? The whole point of being here is discussion. Not making write-only posts.
As I was just explaining yesterday, almost no one ever changes their mind on anything, so making everyone sign a pledge before the discussion starts attesting to a non-trivial probability of mind-changing is an unreasonable standard to hold people to. You should go into every discussion assuming that no one will actually change their minds.
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Yes, I would like to be challenged on the notion that all politicians have become completely self-serving and/or only serve the wealthy and elite and are incapable of nuanced thinking.
Maybe instead re-evaluate the position politicians play in your worldview? One of the reasons I lean libertarian is my understanding that people's well-meaning motives and actions are easily corruptible and so the best we can do is limit the power given to anyone person. IMO, the root of your angst is that you want a single person moral enough to exercise a level of power no single person is moral enough exercise. The solution is not to create a false specter of a more-perfect human, but to reduce the power of the federal government.
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But you’re correct now and would be incorrect to change your viewpoint.
So the thing you want challenged shouldn’t be.
You should challenge the idea that Trump is an existential threat to anything or that living through Christ makes you live your best life … or some such.
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Christian agape for a Haitian voodoo neighbor would involve getting them to stop practicing voodoo and turn to Christ.
Christian agape applies to Christians, the in-group. Christians have an obligation to lead strangers to Christ, but the emphasis of love in the gospel is decidedly not on strangers. In Christianity, the voodoo practitioner is not your neighbor even if he literally lives next door to you.
Among other things, this interpretation doesn’t really jibe with the Great Commission.
The Great Commission does not say to make disciples out of neighborly love, or any love for that matter. It says to make disciples. Upon becoming Christian they become neighbors, brothers, etc. The theology of this can be explored through other passages: “many are called but few are chosen”; “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world”; “he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons”; “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him”; “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you”. It’s not simply that you create disciples through your own efforts and they become Christians from a blank slate because they have persuaded — there’s an element of Christ having already chosen those who would hear his message. There are logic and moral arguments against this which are known among atheists but that is, of course, outside the premises of the religion. Romans 9 takes this idea to an extreme level, calling those who can’t hear Christ “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, molded by God to show his wrath”. Not very neighborly to non-Christians, right? Barely humanizing. Another interesting tidbit is that the original Eucharist was called the Agape Feast, the same word used for love. Outsiders were completely excluded from participation in the central love ritual of the religion, and not just outsiders but students who were yet confirmed members. Those who participated but in Judas-esque fashion were also utterly dehumanized in the epistle of Jude, labeled “reefs at your love feast for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever”. Lastly, I would ask you whether Christ can love someone he never knew? Christ, plainly, never knew those who do not follow him, and at his return he tells them to go away. (Matthew 7:23).
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I just love that style of self flagellation before getting to the point. What is the point of repeating the laundry list of Trump, GOP etc complains as a preface?
I like to think that someone might understand how I'm feeling and give genuine, constructive responses. And if you read through what I wrote, I address my issues that I have with folks on the left, too.
To me it always sounds like trying to bargain with a bully. It is not going to work. Especially on reddit. And being apostate has always been worse than being infidel from the point of the inquisition. Just by starting talking you are burning a bridge. The least you can do it is to do it in style and to grill some hamburgers on the fire.
Well, that's what politics in 2024 feels like to me -- arguing with a bully.
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He originally posted it on reddit, it's to reassure others that he's part if the ingroup. Though it never works, of course.
A true member of the in-group would know to read the room.
I don't know what I'm a member of anymore, but I will grant you that I didn't read the room and probably should have just posted it here.
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did you watch the VP debate? I thought it was relatively calm and respectful, at least as far as anything in American presidential politics can be respectful these days. It's probably the sort of thing you're looking for, or at least a step in that direction. of course there was still a lot of "your running mate is hitler!!!!" but they were at least able to discuss the issues a bit and find some common ground.
No, I'm honestly just emotionally over it all.
This is OK. Just stop paying attention to politics. It will make little difference to your life beyond the improvement of shaking off the stress.
Almost any claim that X disaster will happen if you don't vote for Y is garbage. Most people just keep working, living, loving and tune out politics.
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The VP debate looked like two reasonable people trying to discuss what’s best for the country.
I didn't watch it because I generally assumed that neither candidate would have been civil and that both are so deeply partisan that there wouldn't be anything to glean from it.
I'm happy to report that in this case, at least, your assumption was at least partially incorrect. I can't speak to whether you would glean anything from the debate, as I don't know how much you know about either campaign's issue positions. However, it was the furthest thing from bullying both Vance and Walz were very civil throughout, and the debate was far more policy-heavy than the Presidential overcard a few weeks ago. Though they disagreed a lot, they did so politely, and also were ready to acknowledge areas of commonality. Both men saw an approximately 20 point increase in their favorability ratings post-debate, according to a CNN poll.
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I think if you watched it you would be very pleasantly surprised. I was.
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How?
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Just to be clear: are you also bothered by all the Trump supporters and wrongthinkers who have had their friendships, familial ties, and careers ruined? Are you bothered by what happened to a figure like, say, James Damore? Or does your sympathy run out when dealing with people who have "objectively" dangerous ideas?
Why? He was already president for four years. Nothing happened to American democracy. It's doing just fine. What will make the next four years so much more dangerous than the previous four years?
The basic point you need to understand is that people argue and fight for reasons. It's not just random, and it's not just because people are stupid. You can't just have someone come along and say "have you all just tried respecting each other instead?" and then everyone claps and goes "ah, how could we have been so blind, if only we had just tried respecting each other instead then we could have avoided all this mess".
People fight because they have mutually incompatible views about how society should be structured, and it's impossible for everyone's preferences to be implemented simultaneously. Not everyone can get what they want; someone has to lose out. And no one is happy with losing out. There's nothing unique about our current situation compared to any other historical era. Open the history book to any random page and you'll find conflict.
It's not arguments in general that I take issue with, its how those arguments are conveyed. I think that you can argue while being respectful, but it seems like politicians have moved away from that.
Maybe I'm just projecting my own desire for people to be civilized when addressing conflict. When people start escalating their arguments into ad homs and inflammatory rhetoric, I disengage, I distance myself from them, or just stop talking to them all together.
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Oh, lay off him. He explicitly asked for "gentle guidance", and other than that not being it, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish by jumping on someone who's going through burnout.
I don't perceive him as not being gentle. I have no issue with his his comment. And yes, a lot of what I'm feeling is burnout.
Well, I'll leave you two to it, then.
I reacted the way I did because I sympathize a lot with the way you're feeling, but I come from the other side politically, and thought his type of response is not a particularly productive way to engage with what you're expressing.
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I'll be as gentle as the decorum rules require. If the mods think that my post violated the decorum rules then they're free to let me know. I don't think it did though.
If we took every request to be "gentle" seriously, then people could just preface every post with "please be gentle" and then soapbox about whatever they wanted to with the expectation that they would receive no pushback, which is obviously not desirable. This is a space for having your ideas challenged, so if you post here, you should expect to have your ideas challenged. I raised the points that I thought were a) salient for understanding the foundations of OP's worldview and b) possibly fruitful for a broader discussion.
It's not about rules and mods, it's about picking fights when there's no reason to. But he said he doesn't mind your response, so I'll bow out.
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I sympathize with you quite a lot, I am non-US resident and I observe very similar pattern. However a lot of it I think is in the end are very fake controversies. Watching the media it seems that every single week there is a new crisis or a new controversy which will affect the future of the whole nation. People get riled up and lose themself in it.
I recently read a decent book called A Benedict Option by Rod Dreher. His outlook is to just accept that you already lost the culture war and just focus on what you can affect: build a community, be active in your local environment and live your values in your daily life - basically build something like Benedictine monastery in your environment. It can be definitely more useful compared to raging on Twitter over climate change or dog-eating Haitians or any other number of controversies you cannot move in any direction anyway.
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hasn't Trump built a bridge across the aisle. he is campaigning with Tulsi Gabbard and RFK. similarly, the Democrats have support from anti-Trump Republicans.
Is it bridge-building, or is it simply ongoing realignment?
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