The Bible Opens the Door to Prejudice


While plenty of Christians speak out against prejudices plenty of others use the Bible to justify them. A logical approach to religion would be to adopt one that does not include things that are harmful to society. Christianity and its Bible unfortunately are used to harm.

There is a big current flap of Trump having a dinner with the rap celebrity Kayne West, who has expressed anti-Jewish statements, and Kayne's friend who makes a living doing antisemitic entertainment. If Trump wanted to distance himself from antisemitism he would not associate with Kayne West, let along the other guy. But Trump represents the culture he grew up in and never left. His father expressed anti-black comments and probably anti Jew was well. We live in a place where these things live.

The Bible preaches believers should shun various others. It mentions the Moabites 38 times. God gave orders in II Corinthians to not marry a Moabite. Prejudice preached against the Moabites opened the door to prejudice against people of color. The Bible was used for hundreds of years in the U.S. to justify slavery and segregation. Segregation, it was said, was necessary to prevent white people from marrying the equivalent of the Moabites, black people.

With Jews, the Bible tells us they were responsible for killing Jesus. One of the versions of the scene at the cross tells of Jews telling Pilate to kill him. What better reason is there to hate a group, the Jews, than this? A common critical review of this story in the Bible attributes it to a need by Jewish leaders at the time to make nice with the Romans. There is a high probability the events in the story never happened.

For whatever reason, white Europeans have disliked the Jews for at least a few thousand years. When Christianity came along it piggy backed on this dislike to become a successful religion. 

Since anti semitism has been around Trump all of his life it seems natural to him to follow the crowd. It takes intellectual effort to separate oneself from the culture that surrounds us. He is the living example on being intellectually lazy.  

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