In the end, many churches are only as moral as the person in the pews who supports them the most. There's a financial interest that can't be ignored. So it becomes, well, yes, infidelity is bad, but you're really a good person so you're forgiven, and here's the collection plate. Not to belabor the point, but almost every Christian denomi…
In the end, many churches are only as moral as the person in the pews who supports them the most. There's a financial interest that can't be ignored. So it becomes, well, yes, infidelity is bad, but you're really a good person so you're forgiven, and here's the collection plate. Not to belabor the point, but almost every Christian denomination in the South before the Civil War was just fine with slavery, actually, no big deal, maybe it's even good. You can't get over your skis and get much more moral than your congregation, or you'll be left without a congregation. And once you've established that it's fine and dandy if good people (defined by members of the church) do bad things, it's a hop and a skip to believing that good people must be inherently good, and therefore bad people must be inherently bad.
Southern churches were able to justify slavery so easily because it is not only justified but condoned in the bible. There are whole systems of rules around slavery recorded in the bible.
But yes, to your last few sentences that's exactly how it works. Go figure that religions that can forgive a deity for killing all of the babies on the planet earth with a flood could give Joe from down the block a pass on whatever the hell he did. If you worship a mass-murderer then of course you're going to have a massive forgiveness system--though it may be based around which god the sinner believes in. Muslims cannot seek eternal forgiveness from Christians and the Christian god unless they first convert. Thems the rules, set down by the guy who supposedly killed the whole world, recorded and spoken through the handful of men who he supposedly spoke to directly who later became prophets or whatever the fork.
In the end, many churches are only as moral as the person in the pews who supports them the most. There's a financial interest that can't be ignored. So it becomes, well, yes, infidelity is bad, but you're really a good person so you're forgiven, and here's the collection plate. Not to belabor the point, but almost every Christian denomination in the South before the Civil War was just fine with slavery, actually, no big deal, maybe it's even good. You can't get over your skis and get much more moral than your congregation, or you'll be left without a congregation. And once you've established that it's fine and dandy if good people (defined by members of the church) do bad things, it's a hop and a skip to believing that good people must be inherently good, and therefore bad people must be inherently bad.
Southern churches were able to justify slavery so easily because it is not only justified but condoned in the bible. There are whole systems of rules around slavery recorded in the bible.
But yes, to your last few sentences that's exactly how it works. Go figure that religions that can forgive a deity for killing all of the babies on the planet earth with a flood could give Joe from down the block a pass on whatever the hell he did. If you worship a mass-murderer then of course you're going to have a massive forgiveness system--though it may be based around which god the sinner believes in. Muslims cannot seek eternal forgiveness from Christians and the Christian god unless they first convert. Thems the rules, set down by the guy who supposedly killed the whole world, recorded and spoken through the handful of men who he supposedly spoke to directly who later became prophets or whatever the fork.