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Notes -
He Gets Us
There has been great controversy over a recent Christian ad that played during the Super Bowl.
“He gets us,” the ad in question, and the organization that created it, is a subsidiary of the ‘The Signatry,’ a fund that aims to spread biblical teachings around the planet, which is also a business alias by another organization called “The Servant foundation.” It is one of the largest Christian Grant foundations in the world, with donations from many of the top churches in the country as well as billionaires such as David Green, the owner of hobby lobby. It has pledged over half a billion dollars to the spread of their message on a global scale, with a large portion going to America exclusively.
This has caused habitual controversy within secular circles among those blue tribe adjacent, with many of their reactions being familiar to those already within religious denominations. What is ironic, however, is that these ad campaigns were modeled in a way that was specifically tailored to the leftist worldview by very modern sects of Christianity. The campaign focused on a perception of Jesus with traits that are explicitly progressive. Examine some of the perspectives given by the organization
-Jesus was a refugee and an Immigrant
-Jesus was an ‘influencer’ who got ‘cancelled’ after standing up for something he believed in
-Jesus was wrongly judged
-Jesus had to control his outrage too
Take a look for yourself at some of the ads in question.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0z0J-2P8a3s&ab_channel=HeGetsUs
https://youtube.com/watch?v=v1IJFJwexus&ab_channel=HeGetsUs
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QEEq5VTfmic&ab_channel=HeGetsUs
Since I assume most members of this forum are atheists, most would not look any deeper into the motivations or presentation of this ad campaign with any closer analysis than they would any other form of Christian evangelism. But the point of my post is not to examine this ad campaign, but to extrapolate on a current trend of modern Christianity that is exemplified within it.
To say that the ad campaign was a complete failure is an understatement. It resonated with very few non-religious people, failed spectacularly with leftists in general, and came with the same amount of pushback that any other Christian sentiments in popular media would receive.
AOC claimed that the ads “Makes fascism look benign.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/aoc-jesus-ad-fascism-definition-superbowl-he-gets-us-b2281862.html
For full disclosure, I am a Christian who converted as an adult, and have perspectives of both religious and non-religious worldviews. There is a succinct lack of understanding of the goings on in the Christian community by non-religious people and I wish to shed a light on some of the current underpinnings.
Unbeknownst to many outside the church, Christians are dealing with a type of heretical civil conflict within their own faith. ‘Progressive Christianity’ has become commonplace in most urban centers around NA, and it is exactly as it sounds. They usually set up their own churches so they may freely practice their beliefs. Usually, they attract members with a more serious Christian appearance and then slowly ingratiate their own ideology as time goes by. They are a denomination that has made multiple doctrinal changes that are completely against more traditional Christianity.
They do not accept the divinity of Jesus. While traditional Christians believe Jesus to be the literal incarnation of God that walked the earth, progressive Christians merely believe that Jesus was a man who set a good moral example. This also implies that they deny the literal resurrection of Jesus. While these beliefs are not universal, the importance of faith in general is placed very low on the totem pole of progressive Christianity. This turns their interpretation of salvation into human self-actualization. Along with this, there comes with it a denial of the bible as ultimate authority. They believe the bible only goes so far as to give guidelines, but ultimately puts the bible secondary if it contradicts modern sensibilities.
Due to the first point, this lack of belief in the Divinity of Jesus and with the resurrection turns something that was once about salvation into simple moralism. This allows the Christian doctrine to be molded into something that fits more contemporary progressive worldviews, and gives them authority to shame and accuse other churches or Christians of not following 'correct' christian doctrine.
They embrace homosexuality. Gay people can become pastors and other authoritative figures within their churches. While traditional Christianity considers homosexuality a sin, progressive Christian will spout Jesus’ example of love and kindness to trump any biblical teachings that come from other writers in the New Testament. This allows them to still maintain some moral high ground that they accuse other churches and Christians of "unchristian like behavior" and "Not true Christians."
These are the churches that are heavily advertised on Tik-Tok and other social media websites and are extremely popular in that niche. The reality of the churches, however, is vastly different. I have been to many of these churches out of sheer curiosity, and I have never seen any of them survive for any significant period of time. The numbers they draw will repeatedly dwindle, as many of the congregation begin to understand the perspectives being espoused, and will leave the church for a more traditional one. I have many in my Church who are refugees from progressive churches and most of the stories are very similar. Over time their numbers will progressively dwindle, until they cannot afford to stay open and have no congregation. People who are not religious are not interested in becoming religious for simple political motivations, and people who are religious are interested in the legitimate spiritual traditions of the faith, not materialist interpretations of said traditions. Leftists who already hate Christianity are not going to be convinced by a softer form of it. Likewise, people who are already Christians are not going to be effected by people who don't even really believe in the core tenets of Christianity to begin with.
Everyone is familiar with the trend of progressive ideologues infiltrating certain niches and groups and slowly turning them into spokesman of their causes. Regardless of your views of religion or Christianity, it is an extremely durable belief system. It has survived for thousands of years, multiple empires, countless plagues, and disasters, and I don’t think far leftist types yet have an understanding of why that is. Christians don’t go to church or believe out of a hatred or dislike of Homosexuals. Christianity promises eternal life and spiritual salvation for just the simple belief in its figurehead. Progressive Christianity will always fail, because in order to justify their own inclusion of contemporary social beliefs they must subtract the very things about the philosophical aspects of Christianity that make it appealing in the first place.
I have seen this take many times but I have never taken the take from the other side: someone who admits openly that they just want a video game checklist for their own morality. It is so far away from anything I would ever want that it's impossible for me to imagine that real people would reach that conclusion. Do the people who want to live that way know that's what they want? Would they be turned off if they heard their views described the way you've described it?
They don't say it in those words. Instead, they suggest that without the fear of god and the set of rules there's simply no other way to create internal drivers for morality.
It's tough to keep your face straight when someone says the only reason they don't act like a piece of shit is the fear of eternal damnation. The vast majority of Christians aren't like this (IME) but they're out there.
No -- instead I'll suggest that without the fear of God "morality" is an unintelligible term.
If you think it's somehow 'wrong' to put your unwanted infant on a dung heap to die of starvation or be sold into prostitution; if you think it's 'wrong' to sail down the coast to where the people talk funny and kill the men, rape the women, and enslave the children; if you think that all humans are of equal (and infinite) moral worth; you just might be descended from a Christian culture.
Baseline human 'morality' looks like Genghis Khan, and I don't recognize it as such. It's just game theory.
Sure, and there are social pressures that make developing a game-winning strategy look an awful like morality. Even if it's just "Game Theory" instead of divine edict, that doesn't make it any less good for society or yourself.
I'm a lifetime atheist, but I'll be the first to admit that a subset of the 10 commandments are fine items to start living by. You're inferring that we're all just copying off of Christ's work, I'd say that his was all rooted in basic tribal cooperation.
Gonna press x to doubt on this one. What is the protocol when another tribe has nothing at all to offer one's own besides their land, accumulated wealth (if any), and expendable labor?
We don't have to ask; history is replete with examples of how this plays out in the absence of an otherwise-unaccountable conviction that those people somehow matter as much as ours do.
This is short term thinking IMO. Slavery isn't a viable economic model, raping and murdering only is fun if you can outrun the burnt fields behind you your whole life, and stealing resources in a one time event instead of managing their creation is a surefire way to stay poor.
Of course if you think of other humans as pathetic animals you won't treat them well. Once again, this boils down to stupidity. Blind, ignorant racism can make a society immoral, I won't dispute that.
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I don't think Israel is descended from a Christian culture, and it's a lot closer to Western morality than its neighbors. I don't think Japan is descended from a Christian culture either, but if you went to Japan and started preaching about how you should sail down the coast and rape and enslave, people would think you're insane.
Boy of all the examples to pick. Japan was precisely that way within living memory. What changed?
As to Israel, modern Judaism is younger than (and a reaction to) Christianity, and also Israel is heavily populated by Western (somewhat Christianized) Jews, and if you go ask the Jews who are still fairly un-Christianized they'll gladly tell you that non-Jews are only there to serve Jews.
One could argue that they ended up that way because of forced contact with Christian cultures (i.e. Japan's history before and after the Meiji Restoration). Japan had something approaching a democracy before an ultranationalist junta sent it down the path to the 1930's and beyond.
Speaking of which, perhaps one could have argued that, from a Shintoist perspective, the Empire's actions had so offended the gods that they didn't lift a finger to stop the Enola Gay when she took off on that fateful day. Or, for the Buddhists, perhaps the sheer karmic weight of everything going on caused Shiva himself to manifest in the world, and J. Robert Oppenheimer's recollection of that quote from the Bhagavad Gita was no mere coincidence...
Okay, okay, more seriously, I think it's generally more that religion is necessary, but perhaps not sufficient when it comes to morality--or at least morality at scale. As per Hoffmeister's thread above, the requirements to prevent chaos and destruction--the things that work--may well change as you increase the size of civilizations. When things don't look anything like the Jesus-era Roman Empire, you need something else to enforce civility and niceness.
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What? No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovadia_Yosef
So, what was his attitude towards non-Jewish people?
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China and india in the middle ages and early modernity were more orderly and advanced societies than europe without knowing christianity. IMO what brings order in society is not any particular ideology but the enforcement, through violence, of the rule of law.
Religion in this sense, probably just offers a cope: human justice isn't perfect but those who escape it will be punished in the next life.
BTW, thinking that morality descends from god directly is not universal in christian theology, IIRC aquinas believed that it was derived from human nature.
Okay, this needs clarification. What we are talking about here are the three Theological Virtues - Faith, Hope, Charity/Love - and the Four Cardinal Virtues - Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude. The three theological virtues are only known by divine revelation and the grace of God. The four cardinal virtues arise out of natural law/human nature and can be held by anyone, including pagans.
Hit me up, Tommy A:
Should the moral virtues be called cardinal or principal virtues?
Their number
Which are they?
Do they differ from one another?
Are they fittingly divided into social, perfecting, perfect, and exemplar virtues?
Taking an excerpt from Article 1:
From a different question about the moral and intellectual virtues:
And then another one about the theological virtues:
I was also thinking about quaestio 90 and following of the first part of the second part.
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Yes. We're not talking about order. We're talking about morality.
You'll have to clarify, then. I'm not sure what you are talking about. Are we talking about morality of the individual (as in: the ability of an individual to know good from evil) or are we talking about the moral basis of laws? Something else?
Right, my point here is that without reference to God 'morality' is an unintelligible term. We can talk about order, or smooth social functioning, or game theory -- all kinds of things! But those are not what we mean when we talk about morality. Morality is what is right above all those other concerns by dint of our relationship to our creator.
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