I ain’t catholic

The joke is that atheists are now more closely aligned with Christ’s teachings than Christian nationalists or capitalists, which can be confusing if you’re just going off labels instead of looking at what actual values people believe in.

The point is that “Jesus’ Teachings” is shocked to learn that he has more in common with atheists than he does with christian nationalists and hard-core capitalists. That nationalists profess belief in “Jesus’ Teachings” only as long as it leads to them making money. That they’ll always pick money over compassion and being ethical (i.e., Jesus’ teachings)

Jesus’ actual teaching, such at taking care of the poor and giving to those in need, etc, tend to align much more closely with the values of secular (atheist) humanists.

These values are diametrically opposed to people who call themselves Christian Nationalist who are basically using religion as a cover for being racist and hateful toward the poor. Recently, they’ve started claiming that empathy is a sin (somehow). This is very closely aligned with capitalistic selfishness that prizes money over everything else.

The joke is Christian nationalist ignore jesuses teaching and capitalism is the worst thing since capitalism

The joke is that a lot of Christians have strayed from the teachings of Jesus, like **empathy** and **helping the poor,** to the point that it makes Atheists seem closer to Jesus than them.

Many people become Athiests not because of the Bible, but because of other Christians.

the joke is that atheism and capitalism are the good and bad of areligious belief systems; making it unclear why it’s helping either side. if it truly is defined by opposition to theism, then it ought to take capital’s side. if atheism can tell that this would be a reductive view of the situation, then why is it explicitly atheistic? what does atheism even mean, as a guiding ideology? anything at all?

no, so it can’t be good or bad.

*and the only reason it is helping the ‘good’ side is to maintain an appearance of neutrality, knowing its indifference is fundamentally wrong.*

I think jesus gave a few speeches about this? decried the temples as anti-theist, using the same logic? the moneychangers as devils and parasites, the faithful as faithless heirophants? the indifference of people as the same cruel evil they always complained regarding? something like that idk.

then again what is the church but a lineage of covenance with a cruel, tyrannical god?

The joke is Christians are still stealing valor from atheists for doing the right thing. Even without the promise of divine rewards or eternal punishments.

# Majority of Americans say belief in God is not necessary in order to be moral. (Pew Research)

Catholics are outside this mess in general (the exception is USA but the Protestant mayority is only using them)

Jesus’ teachings exhort people to show mercy to sinners and outsiders, to give to the poor, to pay their taxes without complaining, and care for the strangers within their land. Secular humanists tend to promote these values more often than Christian Nationalists, who seem more concerned with upholding capitalism, something which Jesus would have probably found abhorrent.

“To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. ”

Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum.

The view of the common good is less antithetical to capitalism than recognition of the natural right to property is to socialism. Obviously capitalism is not God and therefore not perfect. But that is more true for an ideology which practically subjugates the religous no? I guess Jesus would want the CCP to persecute the Uighurs and Catholics.

Many ledditors have no idea what is in the Bible and think Jesus was basically a generic “whoa man smoke pot and chill and be nice man” kind of person. They also think they are this so obviously they want to self compare lol

So accurate!

Jesus wasn’t a socialist or a capitalist or secular humanist or anything that has equivalence in the modern world like people are saying here. The way in which people in the 1st century AD would have thought is fundamentally different and is loaded with so many different assumptions and ways of understanding the world that are so alien to us and this is why we have such a hard time with squaring the circle with Christianity in the modern world. Jesus was ideologically an apocalyptic Judaic prophet,which was a current trend in Judaic thought following the destruction of the second temple. After his death his emerging cult, which was essentially a breakaway Judaic sect, was cast as something equivalent to but also separate from and (for his followers) more powerful than the imperial cult of the Caesars. This is because the Roman Empire is the contextual background under which the great drama that was the life of Christ plays out, which in itself was part of the broader historical tapestry that the Israelites saw themselves in, in which they had to define themselves as part of yet separate from the great empires that dominated them for centuries going all the way back to captivity in Babylon.

These things do not make sense to the modern mind, because Christianity like very many religions has evolved over time and changed as its adherents have, and because so many of the more universal messages of Christ have been internalized in the way in which people in the West think (the concept of human rights for instance is a direct descendant of Christian teachings about the equality of all people by virtue of them being created in Gods image)

As a catholic this is pretty much it. 

It might be an atheist belongs there

Maybe it implies socialist.

The joke is based on the interpretation of Jesus as a proto-communist, lovey dovey figure. It might have its virtues but seems to me a little silly especially when presented by the sort of liberals who have this idea of Jesus. They’re fitting him into their pre-existing worldview which seems totally at odds with the ancient world.

A lot of Atheists like to pretend they know more about Jesus’ teachings than they actually do because they like acting morally superior.