Many parishes are subverted by communal or communistic ideals - the thing they want to take the most

Many people view the communion shared by Christians as simply a way to enact the ideal of "What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine."

Those seem to want nothing more than to drive people away from any form of prayer that is anything like the practice of Metta. They don't care if you chant prayers as long as it shares nothing in common with metta.

Perhaps they have installed some priests and ministers in some places who will not preach or perform the rites with any intention? Perhaps the part you do yourself is the only remaining part that will work? Perhaps some of us have only occasionally known priests or ministers or teachers who had any intention of imparting Christianity? Perhaps even at Baptism?

OTOH, metta works by itself.
Metta respect for yourself, for your nation's sovereignity, for our right to speak freely without cancellation, forgive those who disrespect you while gently pushing them out of your spirit with gentle but firm insistence on respect. This practice may slowly push away the people out who think they have the divine right to share everything you know.

Most stock instructions will say to metta other things, but you don't have to. Do remember you are liable to get back what you send out. The other guy is liable to get back what they send out too, but only if you forgive and don't get involved in their drama. It's easier if you meditate.

Subversion artists are bound to say things like "you're not respecting me if you don't let me have your help" or so on and so forth. Bull.

There is a chance Mary Magdalene was from far away. Modern Lithuanian is roughly as old as biblical Greek or Hebrew. "Dalinimas" means to distribute. "Dalina" means he/she/they distribute. Magic used to refer specifically to the practice of using the soul or spirit of a person, place or thing to affect the outcome of another person, place or thing. If someone had been blacklisted into making money by letting other people use her soul for an example instead of learning how to run an honest business, do math, etc. and if they were named after their profession, they might be said to be "magija dalina" which might be contracted to Mag-dalina. If this etymology is correct, it would suggest Christianity is not necessarily all about sharing.

a reply to: Solvedit

So are you saying Jesus preached politics?

a reply to: Raggedyman

Life goes on no matter what.

Sanity is defined by what people experience as wrong or bad.

Beware of those crawling on the floor into your direction.

a reply to: Raggedyman

Kinda diverting from the OP, but I would say he definitely did. He was actually absolutely crazy in the things that he was saying, although what HE said, it wasn’t anything that stuck in his time and was debated over. Simple things like his suggestion of the invaluable worth of every human soul didn’t need to go to debate simply because it was like a law of nature that a king was superior to a beggar or a leper. It wasn’t until the enlightenment nearly 1800 years later that this revolutionary suggestion was even taken up again. I think the politics of his time would be more along the lines of the rights of non Roman citizens like the Jews, the blasphemy of suggesting a religion without a polytheistic pantheon, etc.

I can see though that the Pharisee’s ideas on politics were anathema to what Jesus was teaching. They were much more totalitarian and authoritarian than anything Jesus ever taught. I mean, the Pharisees were just brutal with the extent to which they expected people to behave. From staying away from any chance of touching a female who has “bled” recently, the expensive punishments you could expect for being caught doing anything on the Sabbath, when even carrying a heavy load, cooking, counting money, soliciting financial advice, and all this while they waited for their Messiah who would be a royal, drenched in gold and enforcing Messianic law with a zero excuses attitude. Christ basically came and taught that all of those things were obsolete compared to faith and he overturned the whole idea of Godly being he who beat follows Levitican law.

Even his death brought about what is now 2023 years of from light discussion, to heated debate people would die for when it came to the question of what day was now the Sabbath. It was Saturday, but did Christ declaring Peter the leader of his church who deliverered his first sermon on a Sunday not mean that the Sabbath had become Sunday!? Was it a problem with constantly changing and opposing calendars over time the reason for which it seems to have changed? That is a discussion which while political in nature for thousands of years in our modern secular nations may have become nominal ideas, however they were political in nature to begin with.

Women reading the Bible? Women preaching? Living in a communal system as the disciples did relying on the community for the basics and giving the rest of all they had away…this OP could easily cover 20 separate OPs I would not even know where to start (which is obvious).

Extra stars and kudos to the OP for such a thought provoking topic.

originally posted by: Raggedyman
So are you saying Jesus preached politics?

No, the Lord helped people whose lives were being destroyed by spiritually exploitative practices, which might imply that if a congregation is full of communalizers, it might be on its own page.