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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   28172 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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the west's classical paradigm of an excellent human life: to be a wise, cultured, orthodox Christian gentleman.

If the classical paradigm of an excellent human life requires that you not be a Jew, I want no part of it.

  • -24

A lot of early Christians were ethnically Jewish, it's not a problem.

There is something incredibly perverse about demanding Jewish representation in this discussion about the former leader of the Christian church.

The discussion itself is about a Christian, but it implies a generalization about non-Christians.

No, it doesn't. Bro, I mostly like you, but you're way too sensitive on this subject.

Something I have noticed in the current discourse is the idea that “anti semitism” is something that the general population should be concerned about. The pressec routinely throws “anti semitism” in with things like “the rise of extremism”.

It’s as though we’ve gotten to a point where supporting the Jewish religion is equivalent to being a moral person.

I cannot imagine any time where “anti semitism” is used being substituted with “anti Catholicism”. Can you imagine the POTUS (who is Catholic!) talking about the dangerous rise of anti Catholic sentiment? Or can you imagine Catholics demanding that all things must be made up of and for Catholics and if not they should be considered “anti catholic” and therefore immoral?

To the above poster: yeah, the world being imagined wants you to be Christian because Christianity and Judaism are competing religious philosophies. I’m not planning on converting to Judaism any time soon, as suspect you don’t plan on converting to Catholicism. My position is that that’s fine because you are welcome to your own belief system. Why is it that Jews don’t seem to want to grant the rest of the world the same courtesy, and if anybody ever wants to have their own belief system, that this is considered anti semitic and immoral?

It’s not anti semitic for me to not be Jewish. You guys don’t want me anyway. Where the hell does that leave most of the world?

I cannot imagine any time where “anti semitism” is used being substituted with “anti Catholicism”. Can you imagine the POTUS (who is Catholic!) talking about the dangerous rise of anti Catholic sentiment? Or can you imagine Catholics demanding that all things must be made up of and for Catholics and if not they should be considered “anti catholic” and therefore immoral?

Where? In the US? Historically or today?

It’s as though we’ve gotten to a point where supporting the Jewish religion is equivalent to being a moral person.

The problem here is the reverse: supporting the Jewish religion is treated as not being a moral person.

  • -13

I mean, you are aware we’re discussing a major theological figure associated with the conservative wing of an exclusivist religion? It’s nothing personal against Judaism any more than it is against Hinduism or Wicca or Islam.

On one hand I question the assertion. On the other I feel that even if I were to take your comment at face value, the only charitable reply is that having to ask the question means you wouldn't understand the answer.

But these people are Christians, not Jews. Of course to them adherence to their moral philosophy is important to being a good person.

I suspect that Jews also see being Jewish as a requirement to being a good person.

I also suspect that Muslims, Hindus, and Atheists feel the same way.

I suspect that Jews also see being Jewish as a requirement to being a good person.

You suspect incorrectly.

This is just a shell game with aspects of the definition of «Jewish». Judaism definitely asserts itself as the only true moral and spiritual teaching, and if anything is more exclusive because it denies equality not just to competing philosophies (while Christians are getting increasingly ecumenical, I must add) but to all peoples who have not inherited the blood covenant. Even conversion, when allowed and recognized at all, is framed as a rediscovery of a Jew who accidentally ended up born among Gentiles.

At best you can say the conceit is symmetric.

(I'll admit Christians have more of a focus on infinite post-mortem punishment, and I can see how that, together with the historical relationship, can make Jews uneasy. But even that was equally applied to other Christians).

I think the difference @Jiro was alluding to is that you can be a righteous Gentile from a Jewish viewpoint, but even the best heathen will never see the Kingdom of God from a Christian one.

Then why be Jewish? Is it good to be Jewish and to practice the faith? If not, then why do any of it at all?

If a religion isn't willing to claim that it's good to adhere to it and bad not to adhere to it - if it isn't claiming to supply something that really matters, without which one's life is worse off - then why bother with it?

I mean it seems like this objection is more to the idea of a religion that claims to be exclusively correct and of the utmost importance to human life. If that's true, then of course it will be bad not to accept it. If Christianity really is God reconciling the human and divine and bringing us into his life through his entering into ours, then what a calamity it would be to decline God's invitation.

That's not to say that someone who rejects it is ipso facto a "bad person" the way a murderer, say, is a bad person. Presumably if a person rejects Christianity it's because of not believing that it is true. And we can only really expect people to act according to what they think is true, not necessarily what is actually true. But the fact remains that rejecting Christianity (given that it's true) makes one's life worse.

The prolife movement talks about anti-Catholicism pretty regularly, and they’re a group that is, if not mainstream, then at least acceptable in elite circles.

Well, if you aren't a Christian, then it makes sense that you wouldn't find a historically Christian society's vision of an excellent life compelling.

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