Thread by @JustSayXtian

Okay, since you insist on continuing to push your beliefs at me, despite my having made it clear I'm uninterested, let me be blunt about what I think about those beliefs and why. I think they are based on, not just misinterpretation, but a perversion of my religion.

https://twitter.com/KTinHills/status/1330603339302768651

The Torah, which means "teaching", is extremely clear about what God wants humans to do. God wants us to pursue justice, welcome the stranger and treat them well, care for the powerless and vulnerable and act towards one another with lovingkindness.

The thing that the Torah warns against, over and over, is idol worship. Don't put anything between you and me, says God. Don't think that what you are supposed to do is sacrifice your children to me, or put your energy into worshipping something. What I want is for you to Do Good

The prophets are about how we keep straying from that. How we keep turning away from the hard job that God assigned us - the difficult, demanding task of repairing the world - and instead trying to take the easy route of professing faith and asking Something Else to save us.

You quoted Isaiah at me. Here's Isaiah on what God thinks about professing faith without doing the work demanded of us:

You quoted Micah at me. Here's Micah on what exactly we're supposed to be doing to make God happy:

You may have noticed that in both cases God is direct and explicit - does it require a sacrifice to forgive sins? No. It requires the pursuit of justice, acts of lovingkindness, and protecting the vulnerable. That's it.

So when you come to me and say "forget your pursuit of justice, forget working to repair the world. That's all over, becaue of Jesus' human sacrifice, and what you *really* have to do is profess faith in this externality of God."

"And sure, that's the very definition of idol worship, but don't worry about that, THIS time it's different, I promise".
All I hear is "let's do the same thing the prophets warned against over and over and over, because doing the work sounds hard."

The fact that you quote the same prophets that warned against exactly what you're doing, out of context and with strained interpretations to try to prove your idol is real is offensive, but beside the point.

And to be clear - I don't think Christianity is idol worship full stop. I don't think Christianity is *necessarily* counter to the work God asked us to do. Just these sola fide proselytizers who keep ignoring my boundaries to try to sell me on abandoning the work I promised to do

I don't think God cares particularly much if you're pursuing justice and protectng the vulnerable because you studied Torah, or because you believe that's what Jesus would want, or because of completely different teachings, or just because you think it's the right thing to do.

I know a *lot* of Christians who prioritize doing the work, and I think they're awesome. It's just *this* modality of Christianity - the one that prioritizes treating religion as a zero sum game, and focuses on destroying everything else in order to win that I reject as idolatry