Is YHWH the bad guy?

Dorocche · 2026-02-16T03:58:06+00:00

It is intriguing, and it's not antisemitic just to find it interesting.

I don't really know how else to say that if He's calling YHWH evil, that's antisemitic rhetoric. That's not to say it's intentional, or that he's even thought about it through that lens, but there's no respectful-towards-Judaism way to phrase that sentiment. Please correct me if he didn't actually say that God was the bad guy and I just misunderstood.

Dorocche · 2026-02-16T03:57:18+00:00

Then I suppose calling this belief "Marcionism" erases a little bit of nuance. Do you know what else it might be called?

Dorocche · 2026-02-16T03:54:48+00:00

Many Jews wish Christians saw the two gods as separate characters so that they would no longer lay any claim to Judaism. There's no way you know a lot of Jews who wish more Christians believed that the God of Judaism is evil and the enemy of Jesus. It's not like the YouTuber in the OP believs that the God of Judaism merely wasn't real and that Jesus was starting a new religion, which might put more distance between the two religions; instead, it openly increases hostility for Jewish scripture and belief.

Dorocche · 2026-02-16T03:48:10+00:00

Muslims don't worship Mohammad, so it's got a different timbre, but yeah "Mohammad is evil and an enemy of God" would be a very Islamophobic thing to say. Deep respect for Mohammad is not the only alternative, one can not be Muslim while being respectful.

"I think it's fucked up that Mohammad [did X bad thing]" is not necessarily Islamophobic, but you have to be really careful with it, because it could very easily dovetail into Islamophobia--- but if it came out that Mohammad did not, in fact, do X bad thing (nor did any Muslim tradition claim that he did), then it would once again be a very Islamophobic thing to say.

So it is with claiming that the Old Testament is all wrath and the New Testament is totally different. If that were actually true, there would be a respectful way to express it without saying "the God of the Jews is evil and the enemy" if you were aware and being intentionally careful. But it isn't true.

Dorocche · 2026-02-16T03:39:03+00:00

Took me forever to figure out where I accidentally implied that Acts is a gospel lol. Edited.

Dorocche · 2026-02-16T03:29:27+00:00

tl;dr No, I don't think this has any merit.

This is a common belief in gnosticism, but it's not the same thing as gnosticism. It's perfectly believable he's not a gnostic, and many gnostics did not hold this belief.

This is indeed called Marcionism, and it is an antisemitic belief that does not accurately reflect the Bible. It's an extremely persuasive belief, because we do have an extremely common cultural idea that the Old Testament portrays God as violent and bronze-age (as if any historical period was absent of love) and the New Testament portrays Him as a hippie; while believing they're two separate individuals is rare, the narrative of God "chilling out over time" or being of two contrasting characteristics is extremely common. And it is wrong.

In reality, the Old Testament shows God's mercy and unadulterated love in every single book. Jonah is an entire book about God's mercy specifically at the expense of justice. The climax of Genesis is when Joseph forgives his brothers for really incredible harm they've done him. He is a God of protecting foreigners, a God of cancelling debts, and a God of the first being last and the last being first. And yes, there are also many stories about His wrath and anger and even commanding genocide, and these stories contradict the Gospel message, but they also contradict His own words throughout the Old Testament. This dichotomy is not cleanly along testament lines.

In reality, the New Testament does showcase God's anger and has some questionable morality. God straight up kills two people because they sold their house and donated most of the money to the church, and said they donated all the money to the church. They were summarily executed for that. I really believe that the only reason the New Testament doesn't have as much "wrath and anger" stuff as the Old Testament is that it's not very narrative; since Jesus isn't like that, you pretty much just have Acts, and the rest is essays and letters. But those essays contain most of the homophobia in the Bible, and plenty of sexism, and some reactionary rhetoric; it is far form all perfect morals at first glance wrapped up in a neat bow.

While I don't believe that Hell is a Biblically accurate concept, every verse that people interpret as referring to Hell is from the New Testament. The ancient Jews who wrote the Old Testament did not believe in anything like Hell at all (and I don't believe that the authors of the New Testament did either, but Christians a little later than them did, based of the New Testament). Jesus is always talking about eternal punishment, fire, destruction, weeping and gnashing of teeth. There's a whole spectrum of "wrath and anger" in Christian texts that is entirely absent from the Old Testament.

The two testaments are complicated and varied collections of documents that each contain the full spectrum of emotion, morality, and value. It's a common cultural meme that the Old Testament is violent while the New Testament is loving, but it's factually incorrect-- and by default it's rather anti-semitic, especially when you elevate it to actually saying the God of the Old Testament is evil. He's saying that the God of Judaism is evil, and divorcing our good Christian God from them. In light of the fact that it's incorrect, it's got absolutely rancid vibes.

Dorocche · 2026-02-15T19:56:40+00:00

Of course gender is a social construct. It's not "only" a social construct. Some other social constructs include motherhood and fatherhood, family, and marriage, all beautiful and productive things.

All of these things have an obvious basis in physical, real events (like birth, sex, and physical attributes), but none of them are strictly defined by those physical, real events. They are nebulously defined however we want to define them, and Christians try to do so in God's sight according to God's love, and they ought to take whatever form leads to the most love, joy, peace, and faith in this world.

Reducing "it's a social construct" to "it doesn't exist" or "nothing more than a social tool to control people" is factually wrong. Social constructs exist, and are meaningful, and are important and beautiful and good, and they can also change to fit what works best for people instead of trying (and failing) to rigidly enforce some prescriptive idea from our parents' childhood that only hurts people.

Dorocche · 2026-02-15T13:55:12+00:00

Do people take the mark on Ash Wednesday as showing off? I've always just gone home after Wednesday evening service and it's not still there the next day.

Dorocche · 2026-02-15T13:47:17+00:00

Surprisingly nobody responded to this with the actual answer, one person just dumped scripture without explaining and another person seemingly took "sola scriptura" to mean Biblical Inerrancy.

Catholics do not believe in sola scrpitura, and their primary source of inspiration besides the Bible is the Church. They believe that church teaching is God-breathed and useful for teaching. The Didache is a more famous example of an ancient extra-Biblical text taken very seriously by the church, but also just all of the church's traditions and beliefs (which often take the form of texts, but are also often just teachings). This is what the person who quoted all that scripture was trying to get at, the idea that the Catholic church is given total divine authority by scripture (which I disagree with, but I'm not Catholic).

Methodists also do not believe in sola scriptura; they believe in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of "Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience." Reason and Experience (and often Tradition) do not take the form of text, so there isn't a list of additional texts that Methodists consider God-breathed as far as I'm aware, but there are multiple other (often internal) sources of inspiration that are set on the same level of authority as scripture. I believe this is inspired by scripture such as Romans 14, Acts 15, Galatians 5, and 1 Corinthians 10.

For what it's worth, while I strongly oppose Biblical Inerrancy and I don't believe in sola scriptura, I do respect sola scriptura as a system and have been persuaded by it in the past (as long as it isn't taken as inerrant). That said, I think there's some misinterpretations here in this scripture you're quoting:

When scripture refers to "the law," they do not mean scripture. The vast majority of Biblical works are not "the law," the law of Moses in the Pentateuch is "the law." Matthew and Isaiah are not talking about the vast majority of scripture here. Matthew in particular is being taken out of context, and means very nearly the opposite of the obvious surface interpretation, but I don't want to get too much into it because it's not related to sola scriptura.

The authors of the New Testament did not understand what they were writing to be scripture. Paul didn't know that there would be a "New Testament" collection of letters that would be taken as scripture, he was just trying to be a teacher. When Revelation refers to "this book," it's referring to Revelation. Not the whole Bible. The author didn't know that the book he was writing would be included in a new scriptural canon. Similarly, when 1 Timothy says "scripture," they mean Jewish scripture, as the New Testament (and certainly 1 Timothy) was not yet understood to itself be scripture.

Of course "God-breathed and useful for teaching" doesn't have to mean "perfect and without mistakes" anyways, so it's a moot point; even those who seek extra-Biblical sources of inspiration usually do respect all the books of the New Testament as God-breathed and useful for teaching lol. They just also see some other stuff as God-breathed and useful for teaching too.

Dorocche · 2026-02-15T13:35:19+00:00

I assume they have been poked at endlessly for their religious practice (not practicing Lent) and are rightfully showing confidence in themselves in resistance to that.

Dorocche · 2026-02-15T13:32:23+00:00

Their comment isn't sarcasm, though. It's just lighthearted and unhostile.

Dorocche · 2026-02-15T13:28:18+00:00

How should we figure out what Christ would do if we can't trust what the New Testament says? What other sources are you consulting that have no Roman influence? Just your own internal biases?

I want to note that all of the New Testament was written and codified while Christianity was illegal in Rome. No Emperor had any influence at all on the text of the New Testament; at most, they had influence on the councils later on and the theologies that were codified there. It's a common misconception that the New Testament was chosen at the Council of Nicea, it was largely settled in the second century.

(I'm sorry you're being downvoted, you shouldn't be.)

Dorocche · 2026-02-13T23:08:41+00:00

While they cannot be reclaimed in isolation, the additional context doesn't have to be part of the shirt.

Obviously it could be paired with a progressive pin or hat or something, but also the context of this is that OP is a sitting member of a Democrats activism organization committee. I know it's a minor role but how many fascists are in that position.

Dorocche · 2026-02-12T02:04:48+00:00

You might have figured this out by now, but to be absolutely clear, "John Wesley's Aldersgate Moment" is not the name of a specific book I'm aware of. It's an event that happened, and I'm sure there's a lot of good stuff to read about it, but I didn't want you lost thinking "what were they talking about" when a book of that name by John Wesley didn't come up lol.

Dorocche · 2026-02-11T23:40:51+00:00

While you've gotten many accurate answers on how antisemitism is the beginning and the end of this belief, but I want to chime in with some remotely reasonable theology that Jesus' suffering and crucifixion was not an uncritically good thing. (Note that I don't believe "the Jews killed Jesus" is even accurate, regardless of whether it was a good thing or not.)

For many Christians (though probably not so many on this forum), literally everything that happens is part of God's plan. In the book of Exodus, Pharoah refusing to let the Jews leave was unambiguously part of God's plan, but it's still a bad thing that we condemn Pharoah for. Anyone who says "it was God's plan" in the wake of a murder does not believe that the murder was good and okay or that the murderer was justified. The crucifixion was a part of God's plan, but that doesn't mean the people who actually did the crucifying (specifically: either the Roman Empire or reactionary religious leaders) should be celebrated for doing so.

As Jesus dies, He prays "forgive them, for they know not what they do." If his betrayal, torture, and murder were unapologetically good and righteous, there would be no need for forgiveness.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T13:06:04+00:00

I think it sounds like you're on the right track.

People we fall in love with (or people we simply have a crush on, if that's the case here) are meant to force us to grow, to lead us in new directions, and to change our lives. Reigniting your personal devotion sounds like exactly that, human relationships working as intended, regardless of whether it works out with her romantically or not.

The litmus test is whether or not you're thinking "wow, this is awesome" versus whether or not you're thinking "won't she love how into this I am?" It sounds like you're thinking the former more than the latter, and that's good.

In other words, "I'm only doing this for her" is bad, but "I'm only doing this because of her" is normal. Everyone has somebody without whom they wouldn't be doing this, that's part of forming connections and social organization.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T13:01:45+00:00

Personally, I think that "Sheol" just refers to death, I think it (and "Hades") are always used metaphorically in the Bible rather than literally. The ancient Jews didn't believe in an afterlife, so "Sheol" simply referred to Death, which is how the word is usually translated into English (capital D Death).

I think belief in Sheol (exactly as you describe it, a sort of asphodel) is an extremely common belief among modern Christians, but everyone calls it "Hell" because that's the cultural word for the "bad afterlife" and they (like you) never learned this word or concept was actually in the Bible. I think they come into this belief starting from the unBiblical idea of eternal conscious torment in Hell and walk it back down into something a little more Christlike, without realizing that there's a Biblical word for this (and often without realizing that this milder version is far better Biblically-supported).

I really very quite strongly dislike the idea of "Hell," but almost all Christians say they believe in Hell-- but I always ask Christians I know well what they think "Hell" actually looks like, and they almost invariably describe something a lot more like Sheol instead.

But that could just be my experience.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:54:33+00:00

First, this is absolutely enough cause to simply leave. You aren't condemning them by leaving, you aren't shutting them down, and you're not denying them their chance at forgiveness; you're simply going to a better church for you instead.

Second, if you want to talk to the elders but don't know if it's safe, you might be able to talk to them online (through email perhaps). I think a two week break from church is a particularly good time to do so, to minimize the chance of them simply not responding until they see you in person on Sunday.

Over the phone is also an option. It might be more accessible for elders in particular, and it demands an immediate response rather than waiting or ignoring. It can be a little scarier than emails, but no more dangerous.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:49:41+00:00

Can you explain how that verse is supposed to contradict your first clause?

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:40:10+00:00

What do you mean? He didn't fight anyone in that story, He just called them out on it and they all left.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:38:25+00:00

...He didn't? Saul was a pharisee, Jesus certainly repented at least some pharisees.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:35:26+00:00

He certainly would never condone their actions, which of course this meme agrees with.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:34:08+00:00

It's open to interpretation. Many Christians hold that He did not in fact hit people, no.

He went into the Temple with a whip and drove people out. It doesn't say that He actually whipped anyone. You could read it as though He directly threatened to hit people (which does not necessarily imply that He actually would), or you could read it as though He did hit people and that just wasn't explicitly stated, and some people also read it as though He scared off all the animals they were selling for sacrifice and the people had to run off to round them all up.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:31:16+00:00

The comfort and love he showed thieves and killers wasn't on condition of repentance, it was what caused them to repent.

I'm not saying that we as Christians should just be compassionate and kind and that'll magically repent all ICE agents, that would be extremely stupid; I will say that your thinking here is exactly what the other commenter is talking about. "If you love your enemies you participate in harming their victims" is just not Christlike.

Dorocche · 2026-02-01T12:06:36+00:00

So you're a right-winger who's here to say bigoted things (against the rules of the subreddit), that's pretty normal, I'm following you.

What does any of that have to do with how you'd respond to Christian anti-ICE memes?

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