this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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One time as a kid I noticed they were selling tickets to a raffle in the foyer of the church and I couldn't get over it. The moneylenders Jesus drove off are such ambiguous figures because there's no context in the book it's just 'people selling things at the temple is bad,' so I learned the context and it made modern Christianity seem even less like what Jesus would have wanted. To make a sacrifice at the temple you needed a live animal offering, people living in cities or non-pastoral lives didn't have as easy access to livestock so they had to buy them. Often they did not have the money upfront so the moneylenders would sit outside the temple doing nothing but giving people (often usurious) loans for them to buy animals that they immediately burned. Rentseeking off of the functions of the religion is the only thing that makes Jesus turn to violence (aside from a fig tree being out of season one time)
I went to catholic school, affiliated with a local church. There was a mother of some kids who was the “good upstanding Catholic woman”…really involved in the goings on with school and church. One day there was a car that had broken down at a set of traffic lights and this supposedly perfect example of a kind and caring Catholic was beeping her horn and making pissed off hand gestures at some poor guy who was just trying to start his car after it dying at a light that had only just turned green. Pretty much did it for me.
God hates figs!