I am so not qualified to talk about the Jewish concept of g-d or even whether there’s just one concept of it, so if anyone Jewish wants to talk about it feel free. I can talk briefly about the Christian God, but keep in mind I used to belong to a fairly conservative Protestant sect heavily influenced by U.S. Evangelical Christianity so this likely doesn’t represent all Christians. I mean my old sect, the Korean Presbyterian Church, recently declared Catholicism a heresy I can’t with these fuckers 😂
Much antisemitism below
So in the version of Christianity I’m familiar with God is a unity and Trinity at the same time, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He is heavily gendered, translated with exclusively masculine titles such as King. Not so much gendered pronouns though, since Korean doesn’t truck much with them. Jesus, the Holy Son, is considered to be the Messiah and the fulfillment of prophecies by the Jewish prophets and holy books. (I’m still embarrassed about ever believing this, ouch.) Jesus is considered human and divine at the same time, a concept so tricky–much like all this Trinity stuff–that historically they literally had to kill people who didn’t believe it.
The Virgin Mary is NOT a part of the divine and we were taught nothing about there being anything feminine in God. It’s a big beef my particular sect, and probably many Protestant sects, have with Catholicism that Catholics over-exalt Mary. Some even accuse Catholics of worshipping her as a goddess, which I have seen no evidence of but may not be that far from the history of Mary taking over local goddesses as Christianity spread. But at least we let her have sex after she had Jesus, I think most Protestants believe she had Jesus’s brothers and sisters the good old-fashioned way with Joseph. Evidently Catholics believe she and Joseph never had sex and the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the Bible were cousins or step-siblings, something that had me completely agog when I first heard it.
God as I was taught is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, a trilemma I struggled with until I couldn’t keep up my faith anymore. I’ve since come to think God could be at best two out of three, but from talking to Jewish friends they hardly grant one out of three which is, like, a pretty harsh grade to give the creator of the entire universe lmao. I’ve also been taught Scripture is flawless and perfect and to be read literally, so the pronouncements of God are not to be questioned ever. Like, not the genocides, not the slavery, not anything.
Re God’s shady past, it was a pretty common line in my church that the God of the New Testament was a kinder and gentler one than the God of the Old Testament, and that Jewish people worshipped the, I guess, cruel and barbaric pre-makeover god who ordered slaughters and kept His people to an unbearably harsh set of laws while our God was kindly and full of love (but still homophobic as hell because the Old Testament suddenly becomes super important then and only then). The event that perpetuated this huge character growth in God was evidently the coming of Jesus/a.k.a. Messiah, because now our sins were all forgiven as long as we accepted Jesus as our lord and savior so we didn’t need animal sacrifices or all those technical laws anymore. Yeah, again, I’m embarrassed I ever believed any of this.
So those are the headcanons of God from my old corner of the Bible fandom. It’s far from universal but fairly widespread, and I believe very damaging between its cultural appropriation, antisemitism, and regressive attitudes toward women and queer people.
Also the difference comes in to place with the Bible as well. Jewish ppl tend to follow the god of the Old Testament, all powerful, all knowing, vengeful, jealous, and law abiding. Many of the rules Jewish people ahere to come from the Old Testament, observing the Sabbath, not eating of unclean things like pork. God was something to be feared and have limited to no access to. They also follow the Torah.
Whereas Christians tend to weigh heavily on the New Testament. Christians believe in Jesus, and once he died for our sins the veil from the Old Testament ripped in two clearing the way of god and mankind to become one hence the Holy Spirit. God in you. Though most Christians believe in Jesus and what he did and talked about his two rules, many like to dip into the Old Testament to pick up rules that no longer apply because of what Jesus did. Christians use these rules to okay racism, control over women, slavery, kill homosexuality, killing people who aren’t Christians etc. Christians come from the word Christ as in Jesus Christ.
But a few Christians called Red Letter Christians (which I am) only adhered to Jesus spoken word via the red lettering in the New Testament of the Bible. Jesus gave only two rules 1. Love thy neighbor as thyself. 2. Believe in Him. Never during his time on earth did Jesus condemn homosexuality, control over women, slavery, killing because a person isn’t like you, nor racism.
Is that concept of Judaism something told to you by someone who is Jewish? Because Jewish people I know seem to believe god is a punk-ass bitch and they need to fistfight him, more or less. Jewish people have literally put him on trial multiple times, so mainstream modern Judaism seems very different from the characterization of following an all-powerful, jealous and law-abiding god. And for that matter, most Jewish people’s relationship to the commandments doesn’t bear much resemblance to the legalistic adherence to archaic rules that many Christians characterize them as, aided by the Christian Bible itself.
I had a few Jewish friends growing up. They were from a stricter denomination, Orthodox Judaism to be precise. Your friends sound like Reconstructive Judaism. Orthodox don’t believe Christ was the son of god and that he was just a Prophet.
There are different sects of Judaism: Orthodox (adhere to the Bible/Torah strictly, obey the Sabbath and have a gazzion rules to follow), Conservative (adhere to both the Torah but also *live in the real world* like won’t eat pork but work on the Sabbath), and Reconstructive (which as you described your friends are, they believe in Jesus as God’s son, and condemn God’s teachings of the old rules)
Orthodox Jewish people make up just 10% of Jewish people in the U.S., so they are hardly representative (link). That number is 31% in Israel, adding up adherents of Haredi Judaism and religious Zionism, but they are still outnumbered by the 67% of Jewish Israelis who are non-religious and atheist (link). What we would call Orthodoxy does seem to outnumber Reform (3.9%) and Conservative (3.2%) Judaism among religious Jewish Israelis, however. Jewish people have expressed frustration at the idea that Orthodoxy is more “real” or representative Judaism than other denominations (link). The largest Jewish denomination in the U.S. is Reform (which I think my friends are, if memory serves) followed by Conservative, though these terms are not universal across communities. Reconstructionism as far as I can tell does not teach that Jesus is the son of God, in fact according to my research “classic” Reconstructionists reject traditional theism altogether. While Reconstructionism is theologically diverse, I can’t find a mention of any strain of Reconstructionism believing in Jesus that way.
Yeah I know he’s Buddhist. That doesn’t mean his cultural Christian influences are any less, though. Even atheists in the U.S. are frequently very Christian in their culture. Also George’s understanding of Buddhism is kinda shit if the PT are anything to go by.
There’s more than just Christian themes in Star Wars though, and George’s religion should have nothing to do with how the movies from either eras our judges. If you’re judging a person’s understanding of their religion based off their movies than most the filmmakers would have shit beliefs.
I live in the US and there’s many other religions in the country, not every atheist came from a Christian belief system. I was raised Muslim and Catholic, but I chose to be Agnostic.
We can’t judge people by their religion unless there’s firm proof that’s what their motivation was from.
That’s kind of the dilemma of literary hermeneutics. We often tend to interpret things based on the writer’s religion or the religious influences they might’ve had or what was going on politically in their country at that time but in the end all we do is guess. Not to mention that there is never such a thing as THE interpretation, no matter how much information we collect about George, JJ, RJ and the current time and context. Then we won’t ever be able to seperate ourselves from our own socialisation which will – no matter how hard we try – influence our judgement. And even those of us who grew up in the western world have very different thinking patterns that won’t only be different from each others’ but also from those of the writers, not to mention the differences that occure between people literally from all over the world. So even when I for instance write that TLJ is a result of RJ’s racist and sexist thinking patterns, it’s just the most logical conclusion I came to, but it’s still an interpretation. (but if people interpret his work that way it’s bad, no matter what RJ’s intention truly was, thus he would need to apologize and reflect on his writing anyway) So the OT as a Christian story is an interpretation. Every parallel we discuss, no matter how likely it seems to us, is an interpretation. That doesn’t mean we should stop doing that of course (LOL then we could throw all literature studies into the trash) but we have to be aware of it.
Like I forget it sometimes as well but I have the feeling so do many of you. It’s a normal thing bc some of these conclusions are so natural to us that we forget or never realise where they came from. But I can for instance say that the OT as a Christian story or TLJ as a Christian story seem completely alien to me. (even more so with TLJ) And I did grow up in a Christian society too. So it’s just one way to interpret it which seems very likely to some people but unlikely to others. And what truly influenced George… maybe even he doesn’t know. Same for RJ.
“If you’re judging a person’s understanding of their religion based off
their movies than most the filmmakers would have shit beliefs.“
@themandalorianwolf Isn’t that pretty much Hollywood in a nutshell 😂 What I’m talking about, however, is Yoda’s prattling about how attachment is bad and so on, which people keep saying is Buddhist when it’s more a bastardized understanding of Buddhism popular in the West. I have written about this before (link).
And where did I judge someone for their religion? Like, am I being accused of Christophobia or Buddhaphobia or something here? 😛 I don’t have anything against Christians or cultural Christianity in of itself–I’m a very culturally Christian atheist/agnostic myself. My issue is with people discounting the clear Christian themes (forgiveness, redemption etc.) because of George’s religion. I didn’t bring his religion into this, I made a plausible reading of themes in the story, which is one of many possible readings as @thelastjedicritical said, and someone brought up George’s religion to invalidate that. So I retorted that someone having a different religion or no religion does not discount prior cultural influences. I know that from personal experience, as I said.
I also never stated that Christianity is the only religion in the U.S., I know how diverse it is ethnically, religiously and otherwise. However, it’s just fact that the U.S. is a heavily majority Christian country with some 70% of the population belonging to some sect of Christianity (link), so the statement that atheists in the U.S. are frequently–not exclusively, I never said that–culturally Christian shouldn’t be controversial.
1.37% Black. TBH I didn’t think it would be that low.
Also, they note that the ship is popular in Asian countries, meaning that some percentage of the Asian fans are not “minorities.”
But remember, “minority” doesn’t equal POC. It includes religious minorities, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, and, sometimes, women. White women benefit the most from Affirmative Action, after all.
Can confirm that it’s popular in Asia, Korean Twitter is overrun with these demons.
Black twitter hates Reylow
I’m still ROTFL at the 1.37% number 😂 I’d have guessed more like 5%, personally.
In response to @luffykun3695 yeah, the dynamics of reylow are similar to what shows up in a lot of Korean media. It’s one of the reasons I dislike K-Dramas.
Of the 1,864 women murdered in 2010, 91% were killed by men. (by contrast, of the 3,872 men murdered, only 9% were killed by women). Of all the women murdered (by either sex), over a third were killed by a husband or boyfriend. women have legitimate reason to fear men, even the ones they know.
Of the 3,327 white people murdered in 2010, only 13% were killed by black people. 3% were killed by other or unknown races. white people do not have a statistically legitimate reason to fear other races.
women’s fear of men is based in reality, not bigotry. white people’s fear of other races is based in bigotry, not reality.
A Statistics teacher in Gotham makes a graph comparing times when Bruce Wayne goes on long vacations with times Batman gets beaten up really badly by villains to illustrate to his class how correlation does not equal causation.
Well, obviously Bruce Wayne wouldn’t want to be in Gotham when Batman is in recovery and can’t protect the city. Duh!
And that’s how “The Coward Bruce Wayne” became an incredibly popular Gotham meme
L.J.'s Obsessions 