More on Moral Differences Between Christianity and Judaism

*Except where otherwise noted, “the Jews” below means Israel or the Jews of Israel, not the Diaspora. Diaspora Jews will be referred to as such.

Mungamunga: I’ll point out the obvious: A look at European history reveals that Christians aren’t any more merciful than anyone else. Its main use in this context is to give Christians the assumed moral authority to be appalled at other people doing what they themselves have been doing for centuries. I’d point out examples like King Leopold of Belgium in historically recent times, but that would be piling on.

I will admit that the NT valorizes mercy, etc. for those who want to practice it, and the OT basically doesn’t. If anything, the fact that Christians had a founder and a text teaching mercy and yet still failed spectacularly to practice it makes them look worse if anything.

At least we are supposed to be merciful. Are the Jews? Look at how they act!

I’m thinking though that that’s why the West has been so appalled at the behavior of the Jews (Israel). The way the Jews act offends our sensibilities. Robert Fisk was reporting from there one time and he said it’s about a difference in values – the Jews value Old Testament values of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This is where I got the whole idea for this essay – from his article.

I’m having a hard time understanding why the West is so terrible and unmerciful these days.

The West is leading edge of all sorts of rights-based movements that could be argued are based on mercy. Do the Jews believe in equal rights? Hell no. Look at how they act.

The most humane prison conditions are found in the West. Do the Jews believe in humane prisons? Are you kidding?

There are countries in the West that literally have no homeless. Do the Jews believe in helping the homeless? Hell, no. One could argue that the Palestinians are the ultimate “homeless” people – the Gods of Homelessness as it were. Are the Jews building houses for these homeless folks? Hell, no. They are tearing them down and stealing everything of theirs that isn’t tied down.

Even the Jewish “Left” in Israel is shot through and through with OT values. Granted the Jews in the Diaspora act pretty good, but they are secularized and largely removed from the Jewish religion. Their behavior is based on Reform Judaism, a bake your own cake approach to Judaism where you pick and choose what you want to believe and and throw out in the Jewish religion.

“Reform Judaism: Leading the Way to a Better World”

This has resulted in a lot of Diaspora Jews pushing a Left idea that the Jews were chosen by God to lead Gentiles to a better world. I believe this is a bit insulting as it implies that we Christians can’t do it on own, but maybe that’s true and anyway I’m not one to quibble with the idea of leading the way to a better world. The basic concept is great. This is the Judaism of, say, Bernie Sanders. He’s been quoted many times to that effect. It is this impulse that has been behind most of the Jewish-led rights movements in the Diaspora for the last century.

It’s pretty obvious that the behavior of the Jews in Israel – “Jewy” Jews or Super Jews if you want to call them that because they are really Jewish – is not based on such an expansive “lead the Gentiles to a better world” way of thinking. However the Jewish Left in Israel is “progressive except for Palestine” – that is, they buy into the basic package of Reform Judaism of leading the way to a better world when it comes to everything else, but they are fascist monsters when it comes to their treatment of the Arabs. These Left Jews are already heading outside of standard Orthodox Judaism, which one can argue is the true or at least pure Jewish faith undiluted.

Marxism as an “Additive Factor” to the Rights and Mercy Based Approach to Christianity

Another huge justice-based approach has come from Marxism, which in a lot of ways has mirrored a Christian rights-based approach to mercy and fairness. No society ever treated national minorities as well as the USSR did and China does. Sure, Europe is doing this too, but this is also flowing out not just Christianity but the extent to which the Christian-based societies have had their Mercy quotient doubled by the addition of right-based Marxism to rights and Mercy-based Christianity. This is particularly powerful.

I think the Marxists were wrong to attack Christianity. It is the only religion that seems compatible with Marxism. The Jews? Forget it. They can’t do it. The Jewish Marxists in the West and the USSR all left the religion. Muslims? Muslims and Marxism don’t mix real well. It hasn’t worked out very well there, although those societies are based on “socialism for Muslims” as you point out. To that extent, the Jews also have done very well at pushing a “socialism for Jews only” in Israel.

To the Extent Christian Societies are Unmerciful, This Impulse Is Backed Up by Quoting the OT, not the NT

Our failures in the past are not particularly relevant, especially since most of that shitty behavior was backed up by quoting the Old Testament.

If you notice, all of the unmerciful stuff is being pushed by Republicans, who base it on – guess what? The Old Testament! When do you hear a Republican quoting the OT?

The Christian societies of Latin America have been deeply unmerciful, but the Left there has been based on an extreme rights and justice based approach. A lot of this is coming out of an extremely NT-based Catholic philosophy called Liberation Theology that prioritizes “the preferential option of the poor.” You see any of that in Israel? The darling of the Jewish “Left” in Israel now is fully behind Prime Minister Bennett, who openly brags about how many Arabs he has killed and says that the Palestinians will never be free. He’s as reactionary as Netanyahu.

Mungamunga: I would also note that to the extent that mercy, etc. was an ideal in Christian societies, it mainly was practiced among members of the in-group. Jews and Muslims do the same things for each other. That’s the nature of humans as a social species.

Nowadays the West is very merciful towards Muslims, Jews, etc. They have more rights in the West as minorities than they do anywhere else, where they are sometimes not treated real well. How about the Jews and the Muslims? How do they treat religious minorities? Not real well! The Christians are the only people who even try to treat religious minorities well.

A Strictly Theological Argument

In fact, I would argue that the OT isn’t even Christianity anymore. If you asked me, I would say the OT is simply Judaism. It’s not even our religion. And this is true in a theological sense.

I was mostly arguing in a theological sense and I’d prefer to keep it to that. By Christian doctrine, all of the Christians were originally Jews, bound by the Law. We also had Israel. Israel and the Law. The greatest Jew in history, Jesus Christ, came to us, possibly from the spiritual world above, to free us from the Law. In place of the Law, Jesus brought Mercy with a capital M.

The Jews, now Christians, were freed from the Law and ordered to live according to the new religion, the Religion of Mercy. At the same time as they lost the Law, they also lost Israel. So the Jews don’t get Israel anymore by Christian thinking. Instead of them getting, the “Church became the New Israel” in a theological sense. The promised land, the homeland, instead of Israel, became the Church itself. Instead of “next year in Jerusalem,” it became “next year in the Church.”

In addition, with the advent of Jesus and Mercy, the OT itself was “replaced” by the NT. That’s what Replacement Theology is all about. The OT isn’t even relevant to us Christians anymore, except perhaps as an historical document about our less than civilized roots. To me, Christianity is just the NT. We might as well throw out the OT. It’s just Judaism anyway.

Mungamunga: Its main use in this context is to give Christians the assumed moral authority to be appalled at other people doing what they themselves have been doing for centuries.

Sure, but we don’t do this anymore is the argument. And we don’t. Rest of the world following suit? Not so much. But where they are, many of them are aping the West, to their credit.

Mungamunga: I can’t really blame anyone for this, because the Christian ethic demands complete self-abnegation, or you’ve already failed. Turn the other cheek. If someone steals from you, give them more than they stole.

This part of Christianity does not fly. I’ll give you that all right. The problem with Christianity is that it requires you to be “too good.” Most of us are just not “good” enough to be these good Christians that we are supposed to be. We are too sinful in a Christian sense or one could argue survival-based instead of subjection and surrender based. For those who could not be good Christians, they had other options. Atheism, Judaism perhaps, Islam, or a warped OT version of Christianity that frankly doesn’t require you to be nearly as good or at least not so self-destructive and supplicant.

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4 thoughts on “More on Moral Differences Between Christianity and Judaism”

  1. The West has shown much restraint. Early Germanic settlers to East Europe brought useful skills and a strong work ethic with them. They were encouraged to come East since at least, medieval times. That’s the way the way the West was through most of History, a well-wanted well of good. Nazis pushed it too far with Lebensraum, like unrestrained Jews do this day.

    Jewish influence is like the campground in Montana where two kids were tortured. Western culture was the kids playing in the pool on a warm summer day while their Dad mans the grill and their smiling mother watches over them with a pitcher of lemonade. It’s a twisted reality created by an evil outsider with no morals and a chip on their shoulder against Whites/decency.

    America is the biggest sellout and a corrupting force. Uncle Sam is now a slave to Jews and a prostitute to everyone else. The West is no longer Western in nature. It lost its soul.

  2. Robert, there is an interesting Youtube channel called Prensa Alternativa, Voz de la Patria Grande.

    There are two dedicated videos where they talk about Gabriel Boric in Chile and ramifications of his candidacy, mainly analyzing to what extent, if any, he would actually be a progressive president.

    Arguing that he was not so progressive, they pointed out how he called Venezuela a dictatorship several times and signed on to what were essentially illegal protests in Chile and letting loose of brutal repression there, which is already known. They also noted some things about him that are a lot less well known.

    In summary, they said he is an ONGero (a politician who receives extensive funding from NGOs funded by wealthy people like George Soros and has to follow their orders) and how his discourse would put him squarely in the Center-Right. His people put their hopes on the Chilean Constituent Assembly and to a lesser extent on the chance that a progressive other than Jadue took the lead in the presidential race.

    The channel is in Spanish, but Google Translate and subtitles should do wonders. I can make a transcription for you if you want.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G88fYutuJ8

    This analyzes the two candidates

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nidDePqFr10

    This is the one that analyzes Gabriel Boric in detail. Rightists decided to vote Boric just to make Jadue lose. I’ve even seen some Chilean Redditors admitting it in posts.

    On another point, there is another blog that is interesting that I found pretty much at the same time as yours: Ronald Thomas West. He writes about many interesting things, including philosophy. He was raised as an Native American and used to work for the CIA. He eventually took part in an anti-corruption investigation that ended with him being persecuted for going after the corrupt people.

    One of his anecdotes is how once the MOSSAD tried to assassinate him with an method that was “interesting”, but was interesting mostly because of how risky it was to the assassin. The Mossad agent essentially ended up killing himself. The Mossad got resentful with him, and tried to kill him several more times after that. That vengeful eye for a eye thing that the Jews believe in is not a joke.

    https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/05/04/death-of-a-mossad-agent/

  3. Since I read this article (it is below) on a conservative christian blog on July 2016, I have been wanting to respond. I am offended by some of his statements and I believe some of his points of view are weak. Would like your insights on the overall essay as well as his views regarding the paragraphs about income inequality, the poor will always be with you, healthcare and education equality. I am not a bible scholar. I would like your commentary on the verse he uses about income inequality Matthew 20: 1-15, about this verse: II Thessalonians 3:19 (KJV): “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Moreover, I would like your commentary and rebuttal to the healthcare and education equality paragraphs.

    Regarding his statements: “No the Bible does not require that we offer free healthcare to anyone any more than it requires us to guarantee free food and shelter to all.” He says the bible doesn’t offer free healthcare but the bible also doesn’t say anything how government will provide public infrastructure and defense. His attitude about health care is very troubling. I wonder if he would oppose for example, if the Brazilian government, instead of spending billions on stadiums and other facilities that will go unused for the Olympics and World Cup instead built housing and better public infrastructure instead? I doubt it.

    While I agree with his sentiment that there is too much emphasis on going to college, I wonder if he supports government run vo-tech schools? I generally agree that Feminism is bad and has hurt the relationships between men and woman.
    The American Idol of Equality

    https://biblicalgenderroles.com/2016/07/01/the-american-idol-of-equality/

  4. Unfortunately, I think you are very mistaken. First piece of bad news: Christianity did NOT start as a religion more compassionate than the Judaism it stemmed from. Turning the other cheek clearly applied only within the fold considered, so as loving one’s enemies.

    In Latin (and also in Greek and Aramaic) there are two words to mean an enemy: inimicus which means the guy you really don’t like from within your group or circle of direct acquaintances and who doesn’t like you, and hostes which means those from the hostile world outside your fold, no matter they are actually unfriendly or seem friendly.

    Right from the very beginning of the Christian phenomenon to a very recent historical era, you were NOT supposed to befriend the presumed enemies from without, which formed the greater mankind you were not even supposed to pray for by command from Jesus himself: humanity at large is a hostile and damned entity and the community of the truly saved are numerically negligible. Right from the very beginning of Christianity you had far more actual friendships to cancel than new ones to enter so as to become a good Christian.

    Early Christianity took wholesale the rightmost Jewish doctrine of then very few Jews actually applied or believed in to that point, and gave an even more restrictive definition of the in-group which namely asked the elect not only to combat actual sins of the kind the pagans committed but thoughts: free thought was the original sin you had to renounce first to.

    The thinking was now onwards the church authority’s job and no longer yours. Jesus himself referred to the Jewish fold as his only reference, and he admitted converts from outside Judaism more reluctantly than most Jews then did.

    Later on, it appeared that the boundaries of the Christian fold were becoming less and less ethnic in nature and more and more ideological, but that movement was not at all one of greater opening of heart to the outside world Vatican II style.

    Quite the contrary, it was made up of more intolerance and exclusivism: the Replacement Theology that prevailed just stipulated that since so many Jews had fallen, the empty places would be taken by the required number of individuals from without but that the overall structure of the chosen people would not change from what it was when the OT was written and that the proportion of that chosen people relatively to humanity would not change neither, that is to say about one to a thousand or even less.

    But even then, inter-ethnic and interracial opening were not valued at all, just tolerated at a minimum rate for the new fold to grow when the ethnic community of departure proved too hard to convert: you had to remain in the ethnic group you were born in according to the flesh, as well as in the social class you were born it.

    Early Christianity very stringently prohibited all upward social mobility in the fashion of rightmost Judaism and Hinduism with a supplementary touch of intolerance. Racial prejudices were never to be combated: you had to believe in the inequalities generally admitted by all and consider them as divinely-willed. You could not as a born-again Christian go yourself towards other cultures and ethnic groups, even already Christianized ones unless you were mandated to do so as a missionary by the whole church organization.

    The Law was not abolished (only Saint Paul held a discourse that seemed very liberating in this regard in the wording’s appearance only, because he was a disciplinarian of the strictest kind in practice; the other apostles and early Church fathers just called for the same law plus far more stringent restrictions): you had to renounce to know about the Jewish law and leave the knowledge of its application and implementation to the authority above you and it was nearly always in the direction of more, not less restriction.

    The main fear was that by interpreting the Mosaic Law by yourself you would grant yourself too many indulgences.

    For instance separating meat and dairy in the kitchen was not of your concern because meat along all luxury food items would be prohibited to you except for two or three days a year maybe where you would be given some cooked by others. What was feared if you knew too much about the law was your feeling of personal sovereignty over your life.

    It must be noted that up to the times of the American and French Revolutions, conversion to Christianity was even more difficult and less easily accorded to neophytes and necessitated more time of preparation than entering most Jewish folds. Only the Jesuits had become to make the process somewhat shorter and more amicable and even then they ended up being outlawed for that very reason.

    In sociobiological terms the turn the other cheek attitude was not one of humanism at all but of group solidarity against the outer world : you had to sacrifice yourself and all your whims and preferences for the survival of the community (both the religious one and the ethnic one) not by compassion for the human kind: that was considered perverted in the near-sexual sense.

    It was Darwinian minus the Theory of Evolution. Christianity is more strictly incompatible with Communism than any other religion, though it is also as strictly incompatible with economic liberalism of any kind.

    Judaism is by its principle far less opposite, as it has actually shown to be with fits and starts at various times in history, until the advent of late established Zionism by which Jews have but very little to identify themselves as Jews with but the existence of Israel on the map, which happens to be a fascist state since about 1967-73. Jews however racist or snobbish towards their non-Jewish contemporaries were often encouraged otherwise to think that in the future it would be otherwise, as the whole human kind would be Jewish at last.

    In traditional Christianity such a hope is to be forgone as a main heresy : humanity at large will always be wicked, and it has no future but to persecute the last saints at the end of the world before being itself destroyed by fire, and all humanistic doctrines challenging that Christian anti-humanistic pessimism were to be interpreted as Jewish booby traps set up in the intention of robbing money or achieving a future world dictatorship.

    What must be noted is that Christianity is in principle a religion with Love as a fruit but NOT a religion of love: it is by its own NT definition a religion of the discourse (logos), of the preached word you have to submit to unconditionally by renouncing to all personal ideas with an intolerance towards whomever tempts you in contrary direction to be as directly as possible imitated from OT.

    Love in the Christian sense is better thought of as care: though that care is for fellow Christians or potential Christians, and even more eternal truths approaching you from God, never humans as such and even less humanity or anything intended towards the good of the latter such as social or technical progress.

    Though it is the main theological virtue, is only conditional and instrumental to the process of salvation brought about by submission to the divine Logos, which is NOT the Logos as defined by Athenian philosophy as accessible through reasoning, discussion, and exchange of ideas: for traditional Christianity as was crystallizing right after the first Resurrection news, Satan is free discussion in person, the element of air.

    The fact that now Judaism has become more difficult, intolerant and anti-humanistic (even though it was always so to a certain good degree) than Christianity which seems now to be sentimentally humanistic (but that impression it gives is very recent: it started with Anglican Latitudinarianism in the 1680-1730’s, continued with Dickens’ and Victor Hugo’s literary approach and was finalized about 1960 with Vatican II), testifies to the exceptionally inverted times we are witnessing, which could be apocalyptic, though this is far, far from certain.

    The only sign pointing towards that direction among many others that still lack is the Jews having gone back to Israel, but it may well be a misfire as many Jewish scriptures and admonition by sages clearly state that the Jews will have to make no specific effort and even less any move of conquest to get back to their point of departure as divinely intended: otherwise they are due for a splendid defeat and maybe a few other millennia of Diaspora or the realization that they have never been Jews at all actually.

    Among the numerous other apocalyptic syndromes, clearly lacking are general abandonment of Christianity by humanity: this is true only for the Modern West which now comprises less than 10%;, elsewhere in the world, it is a faith in greater expansion than ever, conquering deep Africa and just starting to bite into Asia.

    But conversion of the Jewish fold to Jesus’ teaching as it is abandoned by all other peoples: we are further from that point than ever. The most probable immediate outcome, if we are to believe the best-established narrative, is as a kind of harsh retribution by the jilted Christian God, a military conquest of most of Europe by Islam as it happened earlier with the Christian nations of the former Middle East and Byzantine Empire, while other parts of the world become more Christian and also more prosperous while the West turns into a kind of Iraq-Syria.

    A lesser but important syndrome to watch before any true apocalypse can happen is the Jews losing their whole financial fortune to return to the exact lifestyle they had in Antiquity as well as all former Christian countries losing all their political power and scientific knowledge once they have given up believing.

    This will be probably true for the US quite soon (my opinion is that the US brand of “Christianity” is the religion most contrary to Christianity ever devised, rather a kind of Jewier than Jew Noachidism for Jesus that could jettison Jesus at once as soon as Israel stringently asks for all pilgrims to go to Jerusalem), but once it has happened, it will turn out to have been a numerically negligible part of the world, setting a very negative example not to imitate for millennia to come maybe.

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