Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

I’m pretty flexible on a lot. Christians are taught to hold the world lightly and hold their faith fast.

 

No worries. Mine wasn't meant as an antagonistic response. I just saw a factor missing in your post.

 

They should have included the Jewish moshiach with the quote "Hey, at least they didn't draw you with eagle wings instead of arms!"

 

Millennials are plenty religious. They simply invest their religious capital in largely secular ideas.

I attend a fairly millennial-heavy church. Truth is they just don't know much about the faith of the church they attend. They didn't grow up swimming in that water (neither did I), for one thing and, for another, globalism. And I don't mean that as some meany-pants Americanism critique, either. I'm saying there's just more of the world out there, because of the Internet and ease of travel and social media and everything, and exploring that world takes time. And millennials, generally desirous of identity-shaping experiences over material goods, take the time to see the world. It leaves less time for burrowing into a specific faith.

And yes, yes, yes their rejection is in part a byproduct of Christian church getting in bed with the Republican Party, and watching their parents play the ala carte game with religion, picking and choosing what "seems right" and "feels good" as an expression of American choice, while rejecting the hard parts. Religion isn't worth it the way certain secular narratives - particularly political ones that put you on the daily front lines - are now worth it. The Bible we read is one of revolution, after all - the scriptures are written largely in times of strife, war and empire occupation - and how thrilling it must have been, being on the front edge of sweeping change. Christianity today is not thrilling. It is on the "wrong" - and more importantly, boring - side of history.

 

Two other things strike me, regarding religion and millennials: charter schools and a plethora of charitable options.

Both of these things (schools and charity work) are traditional ways churches could attract young people/families who were not previously involved. But non-denominational charter schools have drawn some kids who previously might have gone to a church school, rather than public school. And at least where I live, there are many charitable groups within the community that draw donations and volunteers without being affiliated with any church.

 

As a Gen Xer who grew up in the church, I don't remember Christianity as a whole ever being thrilling. But it has been on a personal level.

 

Yeah, that's good stuff. Particularly the charity thing. I won't be surprised if, in years to come, universities get really good at developing specific business school curriculum for running non-profits, i.e. the art of pitching morality to people with discretionary funds.

My instincts run so hard - too hard, I'm sure - counter the corporate Christianity preference of broadly funding orgs and missions that roll into any church. I'm a sticky person that way. Happy to see the money dispensed - but I want to see it matter, especially if it's a short-term mission, in a way that it costs the missionary (typically some fairly privileged twentysomething who picks a nation far away) at least the time and effort to come back and make a reasonable presentation on what the hell they did and who they served, wherever they went, and how God worked in that situation.

 

No. Judaism isn't Christianity Lite. Christians don't have to "accept Judaism." There is nothing to accept. Go be Christians. We don't care.

I spent a gazillion hours in various forms of Jewish education, including preschool, sunday school, multiple times a week hebrew school (the one depicted in A Serious Man!), a Saturday morning religious program, more Sunday school because I wasn't going to continue in Bet HaMidrash in high school. And I was going to be a Near Eastern archaeologist before realizing after graduation from college this wasn't a great way to be able to pay bills.

You know how many times in all that religious education anyone mentioned jesus? Zero. We don't give a shit. Has nothing to do with us. We don't talk about whether he lived, was real, was divine. Nothing. We don't reject jesus as anything because he has nothing to do with judaism.

We didn't learn about messiahs or heaven or hell or original sin. That shit is all christian stuff. Yes, to the extent a concept of a messiah developed, it has nothing to do with the christian concept of a messiah, but with restoring the jewish nation of Israel on earth. But we didn't talk about that either because that's extraneous stuff. There is a loose concept of somewhere after death but it is not a you better be good or you are going to hell. It was just this amorphous place that didn't much matter. Again, we don't talk about it because Judaism isn't about doing XYZ to get to heaven. We are supposed to be good people just because. Or to honor g-d if you believe he or she exists. It has nothing to do with what happens when we die. I have buried both parent. You know how many times anybody said either of them was in heaven during the funerals or afterwards? You guessed it. Zero. We do not worry about getting to heaven (as a good place to be distinguished from a bad place) because we do not talk about it. I was taught nothing about what was going to happen to us after death other than we have to bury the bodies right away.

Yom Kippur is about sin but the idea that everyone is imperfect and everyone does shitty things because that's life. That's why we all say a prayer together, listing all kinds of shitty things. Odds are we did some of them whether we knew it or not. Now reflect on your past year, then go out and do good. We starved for a day, let's eat!

This is judaism - There is one G-d. Yay G-d. That's it for religious dogma. And honestly, I'm pretty sure that g-d exists stuff is fairly flexible. Hell, most of our holidays have nothing to do with religion but are somebody tried to kill us, they failed, yay, let's eat! And in the case of Purim, get so drunk you can't say Haman's name.

The basics of the bible for us, the Torah, are the creation myths of Genesis, followed by a history that isn't all myth, but is as subjective and biased as any history, and laws. It tells the story of a people who started out as nomads and made the transition to a settled "civilization." All those laws in the Torah were developed to either create a cultural identity (see, eg, the laws of kashrut) or to create the structures required to manage a larger, settled society.

So the fact that christians borrowed our creation myths before making up an entirely new religion doesn't mean the two religions have jack shit to do with each other. The concept of something called "judeo christian" is just something christians made up to make it sound like they were being inclusive. You borrowed genesis. That's OK, we borrowed a lot of that stuff from Near Eastern myths that existed before we made up ours, too. That doesn't mean the religions have anything else in common.

So please stop suggesting your discussion of christianity, christian beliefs, what ever else you talk about in this thread have any relationship to the religion I was raised in and continue to practice.

And a goyishe happy new year to you all!

 

lol thank you. Not. Fucking. Once. He was a dude, one of us, a Jew, who wandered the desert. I know that feeling well 'cause I'm a wanderer too.

What was this Jew -- Yeshua -- doing at age, oh, 24, when nobody knew where he was? Tarantino could go to town with that.

And that is where the whole "Virgin" Mary makes a mockery of Jesus and the foundation of Christianity. It's laughable.

Let's put it into perspective: Trump gets ripped for #fakenews and rightfully so yet is there any faker news than the story and norms of Christianity?