I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love
I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on
‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.
Jesus Christ was a brown Jew in the Middle East, conceived out of wedlock in an arguably interracial if not interspecies (deity and human) relationship, raised by his mother and stepfather in place of his absent father. He may not have had a Y chromosome. He spent his early youth as a refugee in Egypt, where his family no doubt survived initially on handouts from the wealthy (You think they kept that gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the wise men? Hell no, they sold that stuff for food and lodging). He later returned with his parents to their occupied homeland and lived in poverty.
Trump and his administration are xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, fear-mongering, warmongering, tax-dodging, anti-Semitic, anti-choice, anti-welfare, anti-equal pay, anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-immigration, support tax cuts for the rich, support Citizen’s United, want to keep refugees out of this country, want to limit our ability to speak against the government, plan to abolish the Affordable Care Act, and they wrap all of that up behind a banner of “Christian family values.” If you support them, you have no right to call yourself a follower of Christ.
it’s so rare, yet so fulfilling, to see the J-man on my dash
One of my friends is literally the most religious Christian I have ever met. What does that mean in regards to her lifestyle and outlook? She loves everyone. EVERYONE. Unconditionally. And she supports healthcare and education and birth control and everything that’s necessary to have a healthy, stable society.
FUN FACT: in hebrew, “feet” is a euphemism for genitals.
so if you ever see “washing feet” in the bible, it, uh. yeah.
(source is my old bible class textbook which i don’t have on me anymore :( )
HOLY SHIT WHAT
I MEAN CORRECT ME IF IM WRONG BUT I SWEAR TO GOD I REMEMBER READING A STORY IN THE BIBLE WHERE JESUS CLEANED THE ‘FEET’ OF A LADY PROSTITUTE INFRONT OF HIS TWELVE DISCIPLES WHO GOT SERIOUSLY GROSSED OUT. THEM GETTING REALLY SUPER GROSSED OUT BY THAT NEVER MADE SENSE TO ME UNTIL NOW.
Time for Bible Lessons With An Ex-Fundie Because All Of This is Wrong!!
The feet-washing custom was exactly what it sounded like. You come into a house in the Roman era Middle East after walking around in your sandals and shit and your host offers to wash your feet with a bowl and a towel and some perfume if we’re REAL fancy. It was a hospitality custom.
And the story isn’t about Jesus washing the feet of a prostitute, the prostitute in the story washed Jesus’s feet while he was a guest in someone’s house. She heard he was there, got super fucking emotional (the Bible says she was repenting of her sins but I like to think that she was a super huge fan) busted in the door with a vial of incredibly expensive perfume, and cried over his feet to wash them and dumped perfume over them AND DRIED THEM WITH HER HAIR, which was over-doing it to the max but hey, I won’t judge a Middle Eastern hooker’s foot fetish if she doesn’t judge me
So the guy who was hosting Jesus (Simon, a Pharisee) was sitting there like “what the fuck” and thinking to himself “if Jesus had ANY idea who this bitch is he’d drag her crusty ass” and then Jesus, using his telepathy Jesus powers, goes
YO I HEARD THAT, SIMON
YOU NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP BECAUSE WHEN I CAME INTO YOUR HOUSE YOU DIDN’T OFFER ME SHIT
NOT EVEN A MOIST TOWELETTE FOR MY FEET
AND THIS WOMAN IS A LOVELY LADY AND SHE HAS DONE BETTER BY ME THAN YOU HAVE SO SIT THE FUCK DOWN
and also that hooker wound up being the sister of Lazarus
you know, that guy Jesus raised from the dead
moral of the story: if you wash a homeless middle eastern guy’s feet with your hair and drench them in Dolce and Gabbana he’ll return the favor and resurrect your brother
Greek myths are fucking great because their gods are so human. They argue, they fuck up at things, they make fun of each other, they piss each other off, it’s great, there’s so much human interaction and then Christianity comes in like that guy and is all like “oh my god is infallible and knows everything and immortal and everywhere at once and you can’t see it but its totally there and stronger than everything” shut the fuck up Christianity go take a writing class
did you just call the Christian god a Mary Sue
Hi my name is Jesus Christ of Nazareth and I have long mahogany brown hair with blonde streaks and white tips that reaches my mid-back and firy brown eyes like god’s judgment and a lot of people tell me I look like Job (AN: if u don’t know who he is then god be with you!). I’m not related to Lot but I wish I was because he’s a paragon of saintly virtue. I’m a demigod but my body is mortal. I have dark brown skin. I’m also a miracle worker, and I work miracles in the Euphrates region. I’m a Jew (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly hot weather clothing. I love Forever21 and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black yarmulka with matching lace around it and a black leather tallit , pink robes and black sandals. I was wearing the makeup of my father’s love for his people. I was walking outside Judea. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of Romans stared at me. I wished them a long and prosperous life.
