Original sin does not require telling a 2 year old that they’re a terrible person. Quite the opposite: Christians tell their kids that God loves them. But that we are sinners is hard to deny when you look at the state of the world. And even the best of us fall short of what Jesus expects from us, but we should try anyway. To love our neighbour, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, welcome the foreigner, and even love our enemy. Nobody does all of that to the level that we should, but we should try anyway.

But clearly there are people with a more negative approach to this. I think they’re a bit too eager to prove their own point of being terrible people. We should strive to be good instead.

I’m not American, but as far as I can tell, it’s also not universal among American Christians. Obama is not like that at all, and he’s a Christian. (And from my perspective, he’s a lot more Christian than any Republican.) It’s not even true for all Evangelicals, because Jimmy Carter was evangelical.

It’s just that Republicans try to paint the image that to be a Christian, you have to be a self-righteous hypocritical bigot, and too many people are buying into that narrative. Please don’t.

I can’t blame you for thinking that. There are absolutely terrible people who love nothing more than to use Christianity to justify their evil. And I can point out how what they do is the exact opposite of what Jesus said, but they ignore it or shout it down.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t also lots of Christians who do try to follow Jesus’s words. At the moment, for example, the Dutch parliament is considering a law that would make it illegal to help undocumented immigrants (whether asylum seekers or otherwise). A lot of churches are protesting that, because that’s one of the core things that churches have always been involved in: helping people in need, including undocumented immigrants.

The irony that this law is proposed by conservative parties that love to lay claim to the Christian identity is not lost on me, but it should be clear to anyone with the slightest knowledge about the bible which side is actually trying to do what Jesus asks of us.

I’m not here to defend Christianity, and certainly not all the terrible things that have been done in the name of Christianity. People have used Christianity to justify terrible things. But people have also used other ideas and -isms to justify terrible things. It’s not just Christianity, and not just religion. Look at capitalism, communism, nationalism, etc.

When you tell someone from the age of 2 onward that they are a terrible person and can never be good no matter what they do they tend to believe it. Teaching original sin to toddlers is child abuse.

Yeah, don’t do that. No Christian I know does that. It’s a weird, cultish thing that you sometimes see in ultraconservative circles, but not universal. I don’t think they are the majority, but they do seem to be the nost vocal.

Biblical Literalism is a fairly recent heresy. In the past, multiple levels of interpretation of the bible were recognised, of which the literal one was often considered the least important. Treating the bible as purely literal does no justice to the underlying meaning or the context in which it was written.

Not to mention that biblical literalists often tend to ignore the most important parts. Like the words of Jesus.

No I don’t. I don’t want the world to end, and I certainly don’t want anyone to suffer. Most Christians don’t. The fact that these sickos do, should be a glaring sign that they’re not following Christ. In fact, I’ve heard of supposedly “Christian” MAGAts complaining to their pastor after a sermon that that shit is too liberal, too woke, and doesn’t work. These conservatives preach the polar opposite of what Jesus taught.

If you want the biblical view on this, here’s what Thessalonians 2 has to say about this (just came across this on Mastodon):

“Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, 2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. 3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”

If I read that, I have to admit that does sound surprisingly like Trump. But he’s not on the side of God.

There’s more stuff about blaspheming and being believed despite his many lies in other books.

I don’t actually believe in the literal interpretation of such end time prophesies, and I certainly don’t see Trump as some diabolical entity, but he is by far the closest match to it that I’ve ever seen.

For now, the EU has strong data protection laws that the US and China don’t have. Although it is true that stupid ideas like Chat Control keep popping up every couple of years.

Ideally, though, you put them in countries close to the EU but not part of it, like Switzerland.

The conclusion that Christians want the Antichrist shows just how deranged American evangelicals have become from a Christian perspective.