Apparently a right-wing deacon said this

This isn't really new though, it's just saying the quite part out loud. always-has-been.gif.
Neoliberalism is the cause of the decay and paved the way for fascism. If you let large conglomerates own everything including news media and social media and then sell access to spew vile hate speech and disinformation to people, the current result is to be expected. It's actually kind of refreshing that they actually come out and say it.
These people also don't believe in equality, they believe inequality of humans is fundamentally morally correct. Neoliberals believe in inequality based on class/wealth, fascists believe in inequality based on identity like race or gender.
The true sin is ignorance and neglect.

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
- Republicans would be very upset with you using the bible against them, if they had ever read the bible to know what it said.
  
  The usual response is "you only know a few cherry picked quotes, and would burst into flames if you actually read the whole thing" blah blah blah.
- https://archive.org/stream/god-the-original-segregationist-by-carey-l.-daniel/God%20the%20Original%20Segregationist%20by%20Carey%20L.%20Daniel_djvu.txt
  **But if God intended that the Negro race should be Segregated in Africa then why did He curse the children of Ham and decree that they should be the servants, or slaves, ot the other races?’’
  God did not. Canaan was the only one specifically cursed to be a ‘‘servant of servants’’ (Genesis 9:20-27). Even if we admit the possibility that all his descendants were included in the curse (the best Bible scholars disagree on this point). we must still remember that Canaan was only one of the four sons of Ham and therefore he fathered only a MINORITY of the black race. And as I said before, even that servile minority were to live in a different part of the country from the Hebrews (Genesis 10:19).
  It cannot be positively proven from the Scriptures that the Negroes were cursed to be black because of Nimrod’s rebellion or because of Ham’s sexual laxity at the time of his father Noah’s drunkenness. But there are some verses that seem to leave that implication. For example in Jeremiah 13:23 we read, ‘*Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.’’ Here the black Skin of the Negro is obviously a symbol of evil. This verse also shows that God meant for that skin to STAY BLACK and not be blended into a Thousand shades of mulatto.
  The notion that the Negroes of this country have INHERITED the “‘deep Sunburn’’ that their forefathers are said to have suffered in Africa is ridiculous. Sunburns are not inherited, no matter how deeply they penetrate, not even by the first generation, not to mention the tenth or twelfth generation.
  If we are to reject the curse of Ham and the rebellious leadership of Nimrod as explanations of why God made the‘Negro black then there is only one other possible explanation to be found anywhere in the Bible or out of it: THE GOOD LORD WAS SO ANXIOUS FOR THE HAMITES TO BE SEPARATED AND SEG- REGATED PEOPLE THAT HE MADE THEM RADICALLY DIFFERENT IN THEIR APPEARANCE FROM THE PEOPLE OF ALL OTHER RACES. He made their skin color different for for the same reason that He made their language different and for the same reason that He assigned them a different habitation.. At least we would be much kinder and more charitable to our colored friends if we gave that explanation.
  The southern Bible doesn't read like yours and mine does, they made some notes in the margins.
  
  interesting read, thanks!

Cowards fear empathy and maim their own capacity for it, because experiencing the pain of others hurts. Being surrounded by extreme, intolerable pain is the most difficult part of being vegan.

probably because he's echoing what Elon said about empathy

I find it more than a little humorous that their defining attribute for the last hundred years is so easily abandoned

Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting 'Liberal' Teachings of Jesus
"Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching'turn the other cheek'[and] to have someone come up after to say, 'Where did you get those liberal talking points?'" Moore said.
"When the pastor would say, 'I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ' ... The response would be, 'Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak," he added. "When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis."
- And people dont understand why I say the orange clown is an Antichrist and may be the Antichrist.
  The doomed by a perfect circle is very disturbing accurate.
  
  https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
  
  Yeah I'm not a Christian, and I know many Christians hate the "reasonable hope for salvation of righteous nonbelievers" thing, but I'll say this, I've got a strong suspicion that if I'm wrong about the veracity of Christianity then Jesus will still prefer my behavior to the maga christians'
  
  Ehh, isn't the antichrist supposed to be a nearly impossibly attractive person, in charisma and looks? A lot of people either hate him or are entirely indifferent and the reasons don't seem to be religiously motivated.
  I just settle with him being a douchebag.
- Prosperity gospel has been shitting on the red text of Christ for decades now.
  Jesus hated wealth inequality. The only group he said would never enter heaven were the wealthy ("easier to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven", in other words, it isn't possible for the rich to enter heaven). Jesus also violently flipped tables and whipped the wealthy to drive them out of temples.
  So conservative "Christians" abandoned the teachings of Christ many decades ago.
  
  Not just the wealthy, but people who were using the temple as a place of business (and likely ripping people off on interest)
  
  easier to pass through the eye of a needle
  Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle...
  Some bootlickers go through ridiculous contortions to avoid the plain sense of this analogy: "The Eye of the Needle was a gate in Jerusalem!" (That excuse was a late medieval fabrication by an indulgence-selling cleric craving donations from aristocrats-- there's no such gate and never was, and if there was one, the saying would make no sense).
  
  Visions of religious leaders sitting in golden chairs and crying out for donations....
  How did we get here? It's not a mystery, it's a cautionary tale.
  
  Technically the Bible had been changing since Jesus's death
  
  Jesus didn't talk about wealth inequality in that way, as far as wealth being bad. His point was that the wealthy tend to think they have it all and are in need of nothing. Mostly that the richer you are, the more you love money than God.
  He wasn't just flipping tables and whipping wealthy people. They were at the temple making money off of selling animals to sacrifice for sins. They had made a business of selling indulgences basically, that was the issue.
- I guess we're going to get more denominational splits based on if Jesus' teachings about loving others is Biblically accurate. Yet another reason why he isn't coming back.
  The real reason.
- Same flawed logic the Russian Orthodox Church used to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine
- Their new Jesus is Trump.

The mindset of magatards.

Cmiiw but isn’t the irony in the right also deeming Trump too dumb to be a threat to democracy? The thought of an articulate Trump that doesn’t make these sloppy mistakes paired with a steroids version of the dizzying policy reform this admin shells out…. 🏳️

My sister once told my mom that empathy is what's ruining this country. It's not even like it was a misinterpretation/misunderstanding, that's almost word for word how she said it. I can't fathom how someone comes to that line of thinking.
- No thinking was involved. She was repeating something she heard on fascist media.
- To me it feels like social darwinism mentality - the belief that helping the weak survive weakens the herd. AKA "hard choices".
  
  I can not understand how people can be social darwinist and still support inheritance, even tax free inheritance. If you want just the fittest to survive, everyone needs to start the same. Same education, same situation at home, same connections of the parents. Social darwinist should support that all children are taken from their parents and be brought up in the same orphanages and are given exactly the same tools.
  That said, I can not understand social darwinists at all. Whoever is dumb enough to support this idea is hurting the herd and according to social darwinists...
  
  The problem is that's actually the opposite of how that works. If you refuse to care for the weak in your community, you foster this atmosphere of sociopathy and mistrust that causes the group to destroy itself.
  Why the hell do you think there are only two Sith in Star Wars?
- I can tell you pretty easily but that won't stop you from pretending to be surprised for internet points next time
  Conservative empathy is reserved only for close associations, it is a crisis management mode that modern doomteller media actively stokes with imaginary threats of immigrants and trans people so it is ALWAYS on
  In times of crisis, humanity's generosity contracts as we have to do the cold calculations over limited resources and the fact that we do NOT value every person equally.
  Example: If I only had enough food for me and one other person, I would not give that food to a bigot because that food is better served in the belly of a progressive
  It's just that they are triggered into this mode at all times and their circle of empathy is basically only family and friends, but deep down it is always only just them if times get hard enough
  You saw the same behavior in times of famine all across the world
- Elon Musk is how.
  
  This happened a while before he came out as a right wing nut job and was embraced by conservatives

Proverbs 14:31 Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
Deuteronomy 15:7 If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them.
Luke 14:13-14 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
Luke 12:15: Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.”
1 John 4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
1 John 3:17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?
John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
- A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
  Imagine if they just threw away the whole fucking book before this, we would have a better world.
  
  Turns out you can fit pretty much the entirety of Christian morality inside of a fortune cookie and the rest is just window dressing.
- Matthew 25 (separation of the sheep and the goats) is pretty much the only time Jesus straight-up threatens people with Hell, and he's basing it on the treatment of the poor, sick, and social outcasts.
  
  Warning to Rich Oppressors
  5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+5&version=NIV

- This sounds like Warhammer 40K flavour text. How can anyone write this and think that they are the good guy?
- "I hate you guys, kill yourself" said Jesus probably during daylight saving time because he didn't sleep enough.
  
  Fair enough, that's enough to make me give up on humanity.
  
  I hear he also dropped the n word a couple times on Twitter but he was taking Ambien so it wasn't his fault.
- Every time I see that I'm so skeeved out. Like I understand needing to close your heart's empathy to deceivers. It's something I've had to do with abusers who play on pity. But this is language that you use to prepare people to do evil
  
  Notably, I don't think folks would consider Christian teaching would not explicitly declare that you should hate (that part is usually just implied).
  Generally what they say is that while you shouldn't just yield and let "bad" people walk all over you and society, you shouldn't "hate" them either.
- The only difference between a religion and a cult is time
  
  I've heard the distinction described as "it's a cult when the founder is still around making stuff up, it becomes a religion after he dies and his followers are left to continue doing that in his name."
  
  The difference is sincerity.
  
  Number of followers helps too.
- Apparently started from a hate ministry in 2021... Dude named James White on Twitter.
  "When you start with man as image-bearing creature of God, you can understand why sympathy is good, but empathy is sinful.
  Do not surrender our mind to the sinful emotional responses of others."
  
  Yeah, I came across some article he wrote. He basically said if he hates someone, they deserve it because god says so, and if anyone disagrees with him, they are making it about "them" and not Jesus.
  He evidently (understandably) got blowback on Twitter back in the day, and wrote some word vomit that sums up to "No no, you don't understand, what I said is not as bad as you think it is (it's sooooo much worse)"
  
  I don't get it, "image-bearing creature of God"??
  
  The sinful emotional response caused by losing your home after the landlord tripled the rent
- Who’s her?
  
  Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. She asked Trump to have mercy for immigrants and pissed him off.
  
  ...she's an episcopalian bishop who led trump's inaugural service, asking that he accept god's humility and share his mercy with marginalised people who fear him, specifically naming genderqueer, immigrant, and refugee populations...
- So then... We don't need to apply empathy to whoever that guy is.

If Jesus ever returned, evangelicals will try to crucify him

Empathy is the enemy of the the manipulative. Their shallow and transparent manipulations wont get past someone with even a small amount of it.
- True for some. Others specifically exploit your empathy by centering it on themselves, red herrings, or subverting the action it motivates.

"Thou shalt not even try to be a decent person"
the 11th commandment I guess

Pizzacake comics might be a torture psyop.

Anyone have the background link explaining this?
- There’s an argument going around evangelical circles that "empathy" is more dangerous than compassion, with the analogy of jumping in to save someone in quicksand, but getting stuck yourself (empathy) vs throwing someone a rope and keeping your footing (compassion). Like if you understand a bad person's thinking too much, you are dragged into their sin.
  There’s even a tinge of women being more empathetic and "susceptible" than men.
  It’s how it sounds.
  Dig into the argument, and they all eventually end up focusing on dangerous progressive causes as tempting Christians, basically, and it feels like they're trying to twist scripture into current MAGA doctrine. JD Vance (a Catholic, not evangelical IIRC) said something related on immigration, that loving your family and those close to you comes before loving distant neighbors, which the Pope very pointedly refuted.
- Not a pastor, but this is what a certain used car-company salesman is spouting:
  https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html
- I posted a comment here with the context
  https://sopuli.xyz/comment/15650366
  
  Yeah, glad to see the specific instance but after trying to search I see this seems to be a broader doctrine. That you would absolutely hate people who "deserve" to be hated, accordingly to the viewpoint of whoever is preaching regardless of whether that person's situation actually affects anyone other than themselves.
  It's kind of like the evil twin of "be tolerant, except of intolerance": "be tolerant only of intolerance"

Being a real christian is about to become cool, I guess?

So no empathy for Elon Musk and his crybaby butthurt feelings? Fine by me!

With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.
Daniel 11:32
He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior… He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them.
Daniel 8:25, 2 Thess 2:10
… a despicable person will arise… a man of contempt… to whom the royal honor has not been rightfully conferred. He will slip in when least expected and will seize the kingdom through flattery and intrigue.
Daniel 11:21
After an alliance is made with him he will practice deception, and he will go up and gain power with a small force of people.
Daniel 11:23
He will try to change the set times and the laws.
Dan. 7:25
- Daniel 8 and 11 here are talking about a prophecy that has already “been fulfilled” - common in the Bible to make these kinds of retroactive prophecies. The bad guy being described there is Antiochus.
  
  That is just Daniel 8. Daniel 11 could reasonably be talking about modern times

Remind me which level of Hell the hypocrites are in? Is it higher or lower than the one reserved for Jesus now?
- I mean I've seen some random Instagram stuff where Republicans think that Jesus would not allow immigrants into this country. It truly is another level of delusion at this point
  
  Don't forget that Instagram is owned by Meta. They've admitted to making people up to get more engagement and rage bait.
  
  Yeah, the widely practiced "Prosperity Gospel" stuff is like a religious studies PhD designed the most anti-Christian form of Christianity for a thesis, and suddenly people started picking it up and running with it.

Hearing voices from people that aren't real is a pretty serious mental condition. I'm convinced religion and all the evil committed on its behalf all just trace back to the root of shit mental healthcare.
- On a similar note, the old testament had a historical purpose - to unite disparate tribes and create a national identity against the threat posed by the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires.
  The new testament is just a collections of writings and letters. We have no idea who wrote them, they lied on the cover saying the texts are written by the apostles. And by a pretty arbitrary process, a bunch of priests picked their favorite writings and made them into a cannon.
  If the same thing happened today, nobody would believe them outside maybe a fringe cult.
  
  PRIESTS made a cannon out of BOOKS‽ That's some Warhammer shit.
  Seriously though, it's canon.
- Perhaps partly, my personal belief is the is traces back to early tribal days. I believe the first cultural leaders likely struggled with retaining control and authority at a certain point. After all, there is only so much you can threaten people with to keep them in like. The worse of which is death. A sufficiently motivated person may not care about their physical well-being if they want to achieve a important enough goal. Create an invisible "soul" and a space wizard that determines if that soul gets bliss or torture after death and it adds a new level of control.
  
  Problem with that hypothesis is that pre modern people treated death very differently with in many places it was quite literal and physical, for example in ancient Germanic societies they thought of the underworld as someplace only the dead could travel to as in the actual corpses went to the underworld at night and returned to their grave during the day. Hell we can even see the ideas of the soul being refined during the Hellenic period with most philosophers settling on it being an "animating force" which is vague but about right with the ancient Greeks. The idea of the soul is probably relatively recent IE middle stone age at the earliest, and probably evolved out of far more ancient animistic traditions.
- The problem is, from what I've heard, the black plauge killed all the good priests. Since they were the ones to go and read a person's last will and testament, they would also end up catching the plauge a lot of the time. So eventually all the smart and respectable priests died, leaving them desperate for anyone. So from then the churches have been lead by undesirable
  
  That sounds like blaming nature for human maliciousness.
  
  *plague

Any thought that could rationally lead to realizing MAGA is wrong is a sin now!

I feel like there's a single word to sum up one who's teachings are directly opposed to those of Jesus 🤔
- "See, if I put my arm through the sling here and reach down a little, all you have to do is shrug your shoulder. I call it the reverse Dutch rudder."
  
  "Then get thee behind me, Satan, but don't stop that reacharound!"

"apparently a right-wing [person] said this" is low-quality content, gets my downvote. Such an unspecific comment serves only to outgroup people.

I wish I had a cute devil girl on my shoulder 🙁
- Fine, I’ll try to talk your mom into sitting on your shoulder again. This is getting ridiculous, Riiiiicky.

I wish pizza cake had her own sublemmy(slemmy/summy?)
- (community)
- Yeah, I don't want to see stuff from a person who threatens to sue subreddits for making fun and criticizing their comics
- She probably won’t because as far as I know, it’s not possible to sue a lemmy community, so… threats won’t work here.

Point or no point, it’s hard not to cringe when I see PizzaCake comics.
- Why?
  
  Enjoy the read.
  https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/s/xN4NxGa5N8

appreciate the message, but God can we please not share pizza cake comics on Lemmy, none of them were funny on Reddit and they're not funny here.
- Look, on many things, we probably agree. Maybe even more important things.
  And I don't even love this comic, its just, fine, its whatever.
  That said I upvoted this comic to spite you and your comment here, because I don't like your sentiment that people can't like and share things that they like because your hipster instinct kicked in.
- To be fair this is on comic strips not funny - there is no commitment to this being funny.
- Humor is fairly subjective. You don't want content because you don't like it? That's fundamentally against the concept of what Lemmy represents. This isn't a website to cater to your whims.

Michael Burns (of Wisecrack) has a pretty good analysis of this: https://youtu.be/VtyRTFGfw6o

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone with an understanding of religion. Monotheism has always used othering of people not within the clique to insulate followers.
Not only are other people's beliefs OBJECTIVELY wrong due to everything my God says being true but you're also commiting sins against the true God for rejecting him.
- Monotheism is the fascist dictatorship of religious structures.

I believe it. I call their god the Tyrant for a reason after all.

Noooo I though I escaped this shit.
- Noooo I though I escaped this shit.
  …which shit? You’re in a community called comicstrips and it’s a comic strip.
  
  The bad ones. That are obviously botted. This shit would always be at the top of the page on Reddit. And it’s never funny.

Demon pizzacake can get it

He wasn't a pastor, he was a deacon and probably just a twitter troll but no one here cares about accuracy it seems
- Pastors and deacons are both member of the church, and arnt that far apart in rank
  
  Sorry no, you are wrong. But that's understandable considering how actively ignorant atheists are about what actually happens in churches
  My only question is why so fuckdamn many of you are ALSO so arrogant about it

This is the comic that makes pandering public comics to promote their paid art
Which might be fine, but it seems like good context to know.
- How is that relevant in this context?
- Unless there's some context I'm missing, that business model sounds... reasonable?
  What you're describing just sounds like advertisement.
- It is true that I personally do not find most of her recent political comics to be particularly funny or insightful--which is fine, she does not have to draw to satisfy me--but there are plenty of her comics which are not about politics but about cats or silly reflections on life, especially before Trump got elected.
  So in short, thank you very much for your comment because it totally inspired me to check this person out and find comics of theirs that I enjoyed! 😀
  
  They threaten people who parody their work with DMCA
- Interesting. You know I wonder…
  If we were them, and worried about e.g. making rent, maybe we’d start a second pandercomic brand to pander to conservatives too
  (Oh of course - being disingenuous is never ideal, thanks for pointing this out)
  
  Apparently she has a lot of fans, because people are really offended by what I thought was a pretty neutral comment.
  I guess that info is supposed to be secret or something?