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How do left-leaning—or not even left-leaning, but pro-choice, pro-life people who don’t care about fornication—who are also Catholics and Christians justify their religion? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 14 hours ago by PixelNomad@sopuli.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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This is a genuine question, because one of the reasons I left Christianity (I was raised Christian) was that I didn’t like how they hate gay people, are pro-life, etc., and overall are pretty hypocritical. But as I got older, I realized there are Catholics who are pro-choice, aren’t homophobic, and don’t have an issue with having sex before marriage, etc., and basically are not stereotypical religious people at all. But I have to ask—how do they justify this? I mean, it must be very confusing, because if the Bible does say being gay is a sin and you are not homophobic and are pro-LGBTQ+, then you are basically saying sinning is okay, which goes against their very religion. How about Catholics who swear? Basically, how do liberal Christians/Catholics justify their religion? Why be religious if you aren’t going to go all in?

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[–] RiderExMachina@lemmy.ml 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I strongly recommend Dan Maclelan on YouTube, a Biblical scholar who has put hours and hours into research.

The Bible is a bunch of books written by a bunch of authors who all had their own views of the world, and maliciously or not altered or mistranslated the original text. In some cases, this was to make a thing that they themselves didn’t personally like also something that God also didn’t like.

Even if you don’t like that answer, we add a lot into the Bible from other texts that aren’t even closely related. Most of our ideas of hell come from Dante’s Divine Comedy, a satire piece about political figures of his era. We also have Lilith, Adam’s “first wife”; and Lucifer being the snake in the garden of Eden, when there’s nothing correlating the two.

All that to say; the Bible is a book of stories that aren’t even closely likely mythologized, but when you get down to the basics, the New Testament says to love each other and treat each other with respect. Do your best to be the best possible you. And when you look at that interpretation, loving LGBTQ+ people and accepting that sometimes abortions are a necessary evil, the Bible doesn’t seem to be at odds with that.

For the record, “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain” does not mean saying “Jesus!” When you stub your toe. It means to not tell people to do thing X or thing Y “because God doesn’t like it”. And the reason for no swearing was to differentiate the “learned man” from the “lowly worker.”