Without getting too /r/atheism, it is funny to see the lengths many Christian scholars will go to try and justify that line.
“Oh, well they were probably actually referring to this giant arch that might have once been translated as “the eye of the needle”, meaning that they were saying it’s really easy to get into heaven”
Like what the fuck? What do you guys think is the point of the passage then?
And these aren’t like yokels and grifters. They’re like PhDs in Christian Theology. The religion at a point is just almost entirely concerned with making up translations and it literally always has been
Christians love to do this thing where they pretend each verse, taken completely out of context, stands on its own. Seems to be especially popular with American evangelicals.
In fact, they like to think that the verses only make sense out of context. No matter how many other verses you can cite across multiple books where Christ makes it clear He’s commanding you to abandon the idea of worldly, material possessions and dedicate yourself and your wealth to helping other people and spreading the word, they’ll go “No it was just a gate” and keep not doing what Christ told them to while pretending to be Christians.
Kind of how they only focus on half of the definition of Gluttony and ignore how it also means excessive Greed.
No. Many of them aren’t. I get the jab, but I think reducing everyone who has strange or perplexing, even illogical views to just being “an idiot or a grifter” isn’t productive.
Ah right - they’re the griftees, having paid a fuckton of money for a PhD in “Christian Theology.”
okay, but you can look at the specific perplexing or illogical view when making that judgment and if that specific illogical view is designed to promote your own wealth the needle on the bullshitometer moves a bit closer to “grifter”
Christians are so desperate to ignore Christ that they literally made up a gate that they called The Eye of the Needle and said that’s what Christ was talking about. This gate, which definitely never existed and was not at all what Christ was referring to, was supposedly a bit narrower than other gates and a camel could get through it if it was only carrying a moderate amount of wealth rather than an extreme amount.
You can defeat Jesus on technicalities. This is why it’s always important to have a lawyer write your holy books.
To be a perfect Christian, you have to become Jewish then? Mashallah! (Just to be sure)
What’s really funny is that Judaism is basically rules lawyering as a religion.
You can defeat Jesus on technicalities
Sure can. It’s like half of the entire practice of Judaism. No lt about Jesus but it is all about cheating God’s rule.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv
I talked to one of the authors of the New American Bible, who told me the text is a mistranslation, and it’s more like “harder than putting a rope through the eye of a needle”, which would’ve been an idiom familiar to the fishers in the area.
It means “impossible”, which is suitable because the things Jesus called for you to do make a rich person into a not rich person, as far as material wealth goes.
According to the Lexham Bible Dictionary, this interpretation “dates back to the fifth century and suggests that kamelos, the Greek word for camel, should actually be read as kamilos, which denotes a rope or a ship’s anchor cable. … However, most scholars reject this interpretation because the meager textual evidence most likely can be attributed to speculations about this verse by some church fathers (Origen, Cyril of Alexandria; see Fitzmyer, Luke, 1204; Barclay, Matthew, 239).”
They also disagree with the gate interpretation, saying that “Scholars have found no historical foundation for this view, and no evidence supports the existence of such a small gate in Jerusalem’s walls.”
Maybe Jesus was referring to cigarettes and meant that only Marlboro smokers could go to heaven.
Although ‘Jesus’ means ‘Mexican First Name’ in Spanish so it could be something entirely different that we are missing
Camel could also mean rope which is a very similar word in Aramaic. Of course I don’t read Aramaic but that’s what someone said.
That would actually make more sense as the concepts are similar enough, instead of thread its rope as opposed to thread vs a riding/pack animal lol
That would actually make more sense
It doesn’t and it isn’t. The whole point of the parable is to say that it’s impossible for a rich person to go to heaven.
camel?
So are you suggesting we should grind up and forcibly extrude rich people through a small tube into a container devoid of air? I’m open to this idea.
You don’t need the saws, just a big enough pressure difference. Google explosive decompression or the Buford dolphin accident
I figured Delta-P would be good enough as well… I had just picked a suitable meme for all to enjoy. Y’all Lemmings are smart cookies!
Given the amount of force and level of violence it would take to make that happen, I’d think the needle would get destroyed or pushed out of place pretty quickly.
You’d need to embed the needle halfway through the tube, and it would have to be flush with the rest of the tube. And it’d need to be a thick ass tube.
You’re also going to need to strain the bones and cartilage out, and pulp them.
It might be easier just to pick up a camel juicer and gravity feed the camel juice through the needle.
There’s another verse of the bible that says “all things are possible with god”
However…One thing the bible is pretty consistently against is liars, cheaters and thieves.
To be a mega-church preacher, you need to be a liar a cheater, and you need to know how to run a scam, so that would fall under the category of a thief.
“Give me all of your money and god will cure your cancer!” obvious scam and a lie.
“Give me all of your money and god will make your credit card debt vanish” is another thing I’ve seen mega-church types say.
The one time Jesus was ever violent was when he flipped tables and used a whip to get all the merchants out of the church. But under 100% of other situations, he literally wouldn’t fight anyone even if they attacked him unprovoked.
Does that sound like the kind of guy that wants a church to be a for-profit business? Mega-churches claim they’re non-profit, but all of them live in giant mansions and own multiple private jets and multiple cars that each cost more money that I’ve ever earned in my life.
I’m non-religious, but I’m more in line with what Jesus wanted people to do than 99% of self proclaimed Christians.
22“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’
Matthew 7:22-23
I shudder to think of how these types have deluded themselves. To think they’d meet their Creator and say something like:
“Look, Lord, I know we locked the homeless out during a blizzard and used desperate peoples’ resources to buy a private jet, and undermined the Gospel’s perception across the entire world at every turn…but we raised so much money…for YOU!”
“Give me all of your money and god will cure your cancer!” obvious scam and a lie.
“Give me all of your money and god will make your credit card debt vanish” is another thing I’ve seen mega-church types say.
Incidentally, there’s a conjecture around Christian circles I’ve seen that says these kinds of actions are what the phrase “thou shalt not take the lord’s name in vain” actually warns against.
Not cursing, as it has become commonly associated with, but the literal act of using the lord for vain purposes. Like saying “Give me your money and god will cure your cancer”
Yeah, I don’t believe these megachurch pastors believe the word of God at all, or they wouldn’t be in that line of work.
Somehow in being an atheist I’m a more honest Christian than them in that I at least state outright that I’m not a Christian. That’s more honest than pretending to be Christian just to leverage people’s hopelessness to scam them into an even more dire and hopeless situation.
Jesus is actually hiding under my couch right now. When I first saw him down there, I asked him what he was doing there and he said “I’m hiding from the Christians”
The boss upstairs set him up with a pocket dimension with his own utilities down there, but sometimes when it’s just him, the cats and my dog in the house he’ll come up to my room and watch me play video games.
He doesn’t like my taste in video games, he’s put off by the violence in a lot of them. But when I showed him video-essays on how “the flood” works in halo, he compared it to the bullshit megachurches are always doing, how they infect people and extort them into giving up their money.
Jesus is a really cool guy…modern day Christians on the other hand…that’s another story
99% of self proclaimed Christians hate megachurches.
Anyway, I think with “all things are possible with God” really means if God consents to it, as Jesus said when praying: “Thy will be done”
99% of self proclaimed Christians hate megachurches.
If the figure is that high, it gives me hope. I wonder if there’s data on this somewhere.
Megachurches are definitely among the “principalities and powers” we struggle against.
If they’re not outright thieving, they’re just self-help seminars preaching about how “Jesus and Americanism are actually totally compatible for realsies.”
Consider all of the nations with Christians, and all within. You have large denominations like Roman Catholics who make up the largest portion of Christendom, a sizable amount of Orthodoxy and then protestants. Protestantism itself is divided into denominations. You have classical protestants which also rule out megachurches, such as the Anglicans/Episcopalians (Anglican communion forming the third largest Christian communion) Reformed/Presbyterians and Lutherans. Maybe a little sprinkling of Moravian and Methodist in there. Then you have evangelical Christianity with Baptists, non denominationals, some pentecostals. There’s low church baptists who again would mostly be anti megachurch. Imagine your small rural congregation “me and my KJV” type.
Generally to get to the megachurches you need to go down the pentecostal/charismatic side of the non denominationals. Sure there’s a sizable amount, but when you put all of Christianity in perspective, you can see it’s a small slice.
Grew up with this stupid interpretation that it refers to some small gate in Jerusalem that camels had to bend down to use or something.
Jesus literally gives the answer in the next sentence:
”Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” He replied, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”“ Luke 18:25-27 NRSV
God can save anyone. And my layman’s interpretation on top of it, no man can save himself.
God can save anyone.
Well yeah, but if you’re a Christian you believe that it’s literally God telling you that you can’t be rich and go to heaven. God may make an exception, but it would be just as absurd for you to count on being an exception to this rule as it would be for you to count on being the exception to the rule that “none come to the father but through me”. If you’re rich, you’re just as damned as if you were never Christian to begin with.
I think it isn’t really to do with the money itself but with the mindset. If you’re the type to dodge taxes and scam people, and love money above all, which is arguably what it takes to become rich, then you clearly aren’t a Christian transformed by God.
I am a Christian and I think your argument is weak. That Jesus talks of a rich person here is irrelevant, the core of Jesus teaching is that salvation is a gift freely given, but not something we can obtain in our own power.
That Jesus talks of a rich person here is irrelevant
It’s really very relevant:
20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
The message here isn’t about buying your way into heaven, it’s about earthly attachments. In part it is about sacrificing your own desires, but ultimately it’s about split loyalties. If you want to enter heaven, you cannot be burdened by avarice, by the desire for possessions. And if you truly seek to follow what Jesus is teaching, then you would give up everything to do it.
Does that mean the gift is always given?
One thing I never understood was how any of it could be taken seriously if I could do literally anything and then go to confession and it’s all ok. Like imagine the absolute most atrocious thing one could do, then admit you did it to a priest, and you’re good? What if you just did that over and over again?
I’m not looking to “slam” Christianity, I’m just curious about that part.
That Jesus talks of a rich person here is irrelevant
it’s your god, of what he says you get to decide what to ignore and what to value
I dont think irrelevant they were rich, I think it indicated that you cant buy your way into heaven and you are not chosen by God to be rich.
