The reading by Raboteau (sp?) for this week was extremely interesting but, as per usual, the thing that really caught my eye was the part of the reading that mirrors current events. That is to say, the pages in part one that dealt with Christians who owned slaves in the 1700s.
The overarching mindset seemed to me before this reading and honestly still appears to be “we will use literally any argument that allows us to dehumanize people we want to use.” If the slaves are pagans, then they deserve to be overworked. If they are Christians, they will allow themselves to be overworked or they aren’t really Christians. If they’re animals, then God created them to be overworked. If they’re men, see above pagan thought process.
Coming from an evangelical (and notably white) Christian background, you’re supposed to save everyone you can. So it’s honestly rather impressive the ability of some to ignore people’s humanity in favor of profit. And this still happens. Thankfully the people who think of, say, black people as animals are now considered radicals and white supremacists, and not generally “that nice man next door.” However, I’m willing to bet that almost everyone has a relative or at least knows someone who thinks that “homeless people deserve to be homeless because they aren’t willing to find a job and make things better for themselves” or “people who are on welfare are on welfare because they want to be on welfare.” The fundamental ideas behind these beliefs are “they’re not like you and me, so they don’t deserve the life we have.” In a similar vein, you get the idea that because evolution isn’t Christian, it shouldn’t be taught in schools, and we can only celebrate Christian religious holidays– anything else and you need to ask off special and probably miss something that a Christian most certainly wouldn’t have to miss. “Those filthy non-Christians don’t deserve an education, or they only deserve one that aims to convert them.” The foundation of all of these beliefs is that the Bible is mutable (when I choose to let it be, don’t get it twisted and think that you can just say the Bible means what you want it to), but we didn’t choose it to be interpreted this way, this is the way it’s always been and God has finally revealed to us his truth, again. The entire foundational belief is warped in a way that’s almost impossible to decipher, even for someone who was raised a conservative Christian. When the Bible is mutable (not for you, but for God’s purpose that just happens to have always been this way *and* align perfectly with my generally bigoted belief system), you can mistreat slaves because they’re pagans or maybe not even human. You can ignore the homeless, the widows and orphans, because they chose their life of sin and God probably said nothing about helping sinners. You can deny people an education or shame them for their beliefs, because that’s probably Biblical.
I can’t think of a way to conclude this, so uh. End angry rant here.