Yes, American Christianity Is Cruel On Purpose

Christians have two major rhetorical advantages in arguing that they have some special access to morality. One, that Jesus was a pretty good, merciful, loving guy who even non-believers like myself can respect. And two, that their moral system, at least supposedly, is absolutely authoritative, as it comes from the absolute authority of the cosmos, God. You'd think this would only motivate Christians to behave mercifully more consistently than anyone else. You'd think that. I propose that the second advantage actually undermines the first. That grounding all morality in the authority of God can actually create a way of thinking which prevents Christians from literally imitating the love and mercy of Jesus. Not all Christians obviously, just those who display heinous cruelty. You know, the ones who have the most political power and resources and popularity, particularly in America right now. Christian ignorance of the cause of suffering. If God is all good and all powerful, why does suffering exist? One Christian answer to this ancient question is, "God originally created a world without suffering, but man was given free will and through man's willful disobedience, he corrupted God's creation, and suffering became possible. Even still, we do live in the best possible world where God provides a moral order in which suffering ultimately brings about a greater good. And submitting to God's will is what helps us avoid suffering in the first place. So, if we point to an individual and ask why they are currently suffering, this thinking often attempts to locate that suffering source in a personal failure to submit to God's law. Are you guys aware of Bryce Crawford? He's a Christian content creator who's been adopted by TurningPoint USA and Liberty University. His ministry consists of him proilitizing to strangers on camera, which at times amounts to outright harassment and exploitation. — So, you got kidnapped and then you ended up in the foster care system. — Yeah. — And then here in America. — How long have you been out here on the street in LA? — Years. Well, I've been homeless 15 years probably or 12 years. So Bryce knows this man has a history of serious trauma and long-term homelessness. These conditions are sufficient to cause severe neurological damage. But when Bryce hears his disorganized speech, guess what he does? — I don't know the last time someone's told you that they love you, but I love you and God loves you. — That might be why y'all came by here because happy. — What did you just say? Wait, can you say Jesus is Lord? Um, yeah. Is it strategic stuff? — No, no. Can you Are you able to say that? Oh, — it's a mineral thing. — No, no, no. It's who Jesus is. Jesus is Lord. Are you able to say that? Can you say Jesus is Lord? — Well, yeah. Not really. I wouldn't prefer to. — The demons that are messing with you? — Yeah. — Do you want them to stop messing with you? — Okay. I'm going to pray for you. God, we plead the blood of Jesus over Andrew right now in Jesus mighty name. any demons inside of him or tormenting Andrew, we rebuke them right now in Jesus mighty name. Holy Spirit, we cast him out in Jesus' name. For Christians like Bryce, claiming someone is possessed or oppressed by demons is a form of blame. To be possessed, one has to make oneself available to demons by committing sinful acts. And the way to get rid of demons is to submit oneself fully to Jesus. It can only be because this man has not abided by God's law then that he's in the state he's in. Understanding this, we can see why Bryce finds it acceptable and even funny to exploit people in severe mental health crises for clout because they are to blame to begin with. — Wholesome interaction right before we're about to go encounter a lady possessed by a demon. So, let's get her. — I have you food and water. I'm just going to leave it. GET THE [screaming] AWAY FROM MY CITY. Coward trash, you old. — All right. Well, I'll leave it right here. — Oh, I tried to give her some food and water. I can't believe she threw that. Did you see that? Just freaking She was doing this um — that handstand. Do you see that on the head? She was like smoking and her eyes like her eye I can't explain the look in her eyes. But this is a learning lesson for you guys. Listen, demons are real. You'll encounter them. People are going to get people are possessed and oppressed by demons. And whenever that happens, you have to understand nothing can come against you when you have Jesus Christ. That's why I'm not afraid. We can't be afraid when we encounter people like this because the battles won 2,000 years ago and Jesus is way stronger and way greater than any other force. We can't keep pushing and pushing on people and shoving something down people's throat when they don't want freedom for themselves. We try. — Yes, Bryce. I'm sure this person is

human swine who simply chooses to not submit to your god and that's why they're suffering as they are. Oh, and very tasteful putting t-shirt ads all over these videos. Love you guys. Go get the merch. It's out now. You see this video, it's out. Go. Link is in the description or check out the Instagram right here for all the merch. Send me the pictures of you in it. Love you guys. We'll see you next time. — Bryce is extraordinarily cruel here. And if his videos harassing homeless people happen to be mass flagged for bullying and harassment, that would be great. A person should not be able to make money on YouTube through exploitation like this. With that said, I don't think Bryce has to set out to be cruel to make content like this. Rather, I think he doesn't know or care about the material conditions which create suffering. because in his mind, suffering exists because humans willfully bring it about through deliberate refusal to submit to the ultimate authority. Do you guys remember when I spent like 23 hours at the Texas State Capital waiting to testify against SB10, the bill they passed which requires all Texas public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments? One of the arguments that the people supporting the bill made was there's so much violence and chaos in schools. These Ten Commandments posters will teach kids real moral values so they stop perpetuating mayhem or mayhem as Representative Candy Noble put it. — Classroom mayhem — to them. Any problems in schools cannot possibly be the result of poverty, systemic disenfranchisement, a culture of punitive justice rather than restorative justice, or the accessibility of assault weapons. It must be rooted in children's own failure to submit to God's laws. Conveniently, this reasoning allows Christian nationalists to both ignore real problems and use those problems to bolster their agenda of taking over the country with their religion. Fortunately, a federal judge just issued a preliminary injunction requiring certain public school districts in Texas to remove Ten Commandments displays by December 1st and prohibiting them from posting new displays. The order is in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of 15 multifaith and non-religious families with children attending schools in the districts. Our friends over at the Freedom from Religion Foundation were actually among those who represented the plaintiffs in the case. This is what FFRF does. They not only act as national church state watchdogs, but also step up to protect Americans from the religious privileging which Christian nationalists are trying to enact. I myself have been a member of FFRF for over seven years now because they consistently stand up for human rights and fight religious overreach in our government. Go become a member right now to support their expert legal team. The link is in the description and pin comment. Thank you so much FFRF for sponsoring this video. There has really never been a more crucial time to defend the separation of church and state. So, I'm honored to work with you y'all for real. Go click that link below and become a member to support them. Christian justification of violence. So if you see suffering as a result of living outside of an ultimate authority's intended order, what do you do to end suffering? You could try to verbally persuade people to submit, the most common approach to this, but that's never entirely effective. Instead, you can act as an extension of the body of Christ, more literally. When someone behaves in a way which subverts the moral order, you force them to submit to you. If your demands are the same as those of the ultimate authority, then imposing your authority will necessarily help bring about better outcomes. — You can be the deacon that wields the sword — commissioned by the government — to kick people out of this out of these United States. — You can't be a vigilante, but you literally can join ICE and be God's appointed avenger. — Right. Who seeks to carry out God's vengeance on the evildoer. I im immigration is evil. And those who are flooding our country, it's not theirs. They are flooding our country like a swarm of locusts and eating up the inheritance that your fathers uh by their blood, sweat, and tears laid up for you. You can join ICE today and uh and make Jesus smile uh as you with a gun pack foreigners into the back of a van to be kicked out of the country. That is a godly, glorious endeavor. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us? " I said, "Here am I. Send me. " What about the suffering that results from this Christian violence though? It may not be ideal, but what's the alternative in this view? Letting the actual root of all suffering persist. Wouldn't that result in more suffering in the long run? And what if a refusal to submit to the Christian God exists on the level of a whole civilization? that would create untold horrors and eliminating that end justifies the means of Christian domination. — Colonization historically has been a force for good

uh throughout the world. It was the process of introducing the rule of law, public health, uh human dignity to certainly this entire hemisphere that we're currently living on. Conquering them was the right decision for all of humanity. and it's just beyond dispute that we are all living much better lives now because of it. — As you can see, valuing an authoritative moral order in this way can allow people like Matt Walsh to say it was a good thing that hundreds of millions of people were exterminated in the largest genocide the world has ever seen. And it allows his audience to say, "No, no, no. He's not saying genocide is good. He's just saying that it is always better to live in a society where Christian law and order exists. But in effect, defending this kind of Christian authority and advocating for genocide are the same thing. Christian exploitation of suffering. Now, if you're not in the position to make persuasive arguments for submitting to God or to directly commit violence against those who won't submit, there is a third way to encourage submission to the ultimate authority. use the suffering of others as a means to motivate their submission. God himself after all brings about ultimate good through suffering. So attempting to do this oneself is literally godly. You guys know I worked in an evangelical Christian women and children shelter before my YouTube days. The shelter provided people's basic needs. But in order to be given food, clothing, a bed, etc., those who entered the shelter had to attend Christian programming daily. If a person didn't submit to the Christian moral order, they were kicked out, even if they had no place to go. This is no exaggeration. When I was working there in 2016, there was a woman who had been at the shelter for a while. She was undergoing job training and was doing pretty well at it. She helped out a lot around the shelter and treated everyone around her well. All of us, staff and client/resident, considered her a friend. At some point, a staff member found out she had a consensual, erotic conversation with a man using her own personal cell phone. She was told to repent, and when she said she hadn't done anything wrong, she was immediately kicked out and put back on the street. The Christian shelter used this woman's suffering and need as a means to gain influence over her. And when it became clear that she would not submit fully, the staff forced her to return to her suffering and need. In this way, Christians, even Christian charities, can treat suffering as an opportunity to be exploited, not as a problem to be solved. This makes sense of why many evangelical Christian politicians in the US explicitly frame the food instability of poor people and their reliance on SNAP benefits as a source of leverage for Christian nationalist political efforts. — At least please move money around to feed people. Why not consider that? — Because if you deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government, Chuck Schumer and the radicals over there will continue to play games with people's paychecks, their livelihoods. And if you do just part of this, it will reduce the pressure for them to do all of it. — I have a friend in the military who trains military dogs, Laura, and they only feed a military dog at night because a hungry dog is an obedient dog. Well, if we're not causing people to be hungry to work, that then we're providing them with all the meals they need sitting at home. — Floyd said it this is really it's not the government's job really to feed people. I mean, nowhere in scripture do we see, you know, God calling the government to care for the sick, the orphan, the poor, the needy, the widow. That's the church's job. And so, this is a great opportunity for the church of Jesus Christ in America to actually start acting like it. Still, exploiting someone's suffering doesn't always work. Some people still don't submit even when they stand to gain some immediate relief if they do. In such cases, why not just give a person what they need without strings attached? That would relieve their suffering, which would be good, right? Well, remember suffering is the natural consequence of failing to submit to the ultimate authority and it serves to motivate a person to submit. So, while meeting someone's material needs could help them escape suffering, it would also remove their incentive to act according to the divinely prescribed moral order. Reasoning in this way, certain influential Christians arrive at the conclusion that relieving someone's pain or even saving their life can be an evil perversion of the moral order. We serve a God of order. Right? It's actually selfish of you to take that which you have not earned from another man and give to someone else who has not earned. 2 Thessalonians 3:10, for even when we were with you, we commanded you this. If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. Basic income is ungodly. Redistribution of wealth is ungodly. Giving money to people who aren't

working is ungodly. What that means is uh when we sent checks to everybody during COVID, it was ungodly. — The Bible says if any man will not work, let him not eat. Now, that [clears throat] didn't say if any man will not work, let him go to the soup kitchen and let the government pick up the tab. That's not I mean it's tough love. If the guy doesn't work, let him not eat. There are a bunch of people who are just bums and they're trying to, you know, ride in on the charity of others. You cannot continually give things to people who are down and out. You you take away their sense of worth and their sense of pride. And if these people are out drugging themselves, let them starve to death. — Christian dominance as Christian order. Direct acts of violence and the exploitation of suffering work to create submission in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term. When left to govern their own communities, even impoverished people can and do find ways to provide for themselves, distribute resources adequately, and reduce suffering. In doing so, they can regain power and achieve greater freedom. free clothing, free shoe program, free medical clinic, free breakfast children program, the intercomunal institute and liberation schools, free legal aid education for the community. — So to maintain people's submission to the ultimate authority, their means to regain their own authority must be taken away. — Is it good that women can vote in America? I don't think so. And here's why. Nearly every legalized moral atrocity of the last h 100red years was made possible by the female vote. Abortion and homosexuality would likely still be illegal if not for the female vote. Mass immigration in the welfare state wrote on the backs of the female vote. Nearly every modern Democrat, including Obama and Biden, were elected because of the female vote. Even last night, the new Muslim New York City mayor, Madami, won specifically because of the female vote. The 19th Amendment has been a moral and political tragedy for America. But why? Women were not made to lead, but to follow and to feel. This is God's design. I don't believe that we should repeal the 19th Amendment because I don't love women. I believe we should repeal the 19th Amendment because I love America and I love American women enough to protect them and our nation from their political exploitation. In case you think this reasoning is new and more extreme than Christian conservative attitudes of past generations, watch this very old clip from People for the American Way, which created right-wing watch. Paul Hayrick, the founding father of the conservative movement, addressed a seminal religious right gathering held in Dallas in the fall of 1980. — Now, many of our Christians have what I call the goooo syndrome. Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. — Jerry Fwell and Ronald Reagan also addressed the gathering. Hyurrick co-founded the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, Free Congress Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council, and until his death in 2008, hosted weekly strategy sessions for right-wing leaders. He was not fringe. This man literally defined mainstream conservative Christianity. In a past video, I covered how Paul Hayrick was a pro-segregationist racist who actually founded the religious right as we know it in order to disenfranchise black people. I'll link that in the description. This is the final step in creating submission. Take the supposed moral order of the universe with the Christian God in total control and man in submission to him and mirror it in all systems of earthly power. place certain Christians on top in total control of all forms of governance and violence which society deems legitimate. In other words, the state and place all others below them with no ability to express their own will without committing crime. — What is this equal standard thing? I don't I don't get it. It's like we should have equal standards. Um Christians should tolerate wickedness equally to wicked people tolerating righteousness. Wait, what? Hang on. It doesn't need to be equal at all. Christians don't have to tolerate degeneracy and degenerates um absolutely must tolerate righteousness or they need to go to jail or flee the country. It's a wonderful principle. — The Christian creation of tyrants within a culture which revolves around authority and submission. Abusive people find fertile ground for exploitation. It's widely known that Pastor Mark Driscoll abused multiple people under his leadership at his old mega church, Mars Hill. He has never apologized. He has openly mocked those he abused for speaking out. And yet, his current church is thriving because the kinds of Christians which surround him think

hurting people is often acceptable if you're in authority over them. Abuse scandals have plagued nearly every major Christian denomination from the Southern Baptist Convention to the Assemblies of God to the Catholic Church, whose victims number in the hundreds of thousands, even without counting all of the genocides they've aided through colonialism. Fascists in power right now invoke Christianity as the framework which justifies their power. Former Russian President Mitri Midv, who is currently a deputy chairman of Russia's security council, described Moscow's invasion of Ukraine as a secret conflict with Satan. He also said that Russia's task in the invasion was to stop the supreme ruler of hell, whatever name he might go by, Satan, Lucifer, or Els. On September 30, Vladimir Putin accused the entire Western civilization of Satanism. The history of Hungary and the light of Christianity are not two separate lines but one line of the same thread. This is what our basic law states. The protection of the Christian culture of Hungary is a duty of every state body. — But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again. — And if you hadn't figured it out already, nearly all of the men whose clips I showed throughout this video are white supremacists who invoke Christianity to justify their belief in racial, cultural, and gender hierarchy. The question we must ask at this point is, does Christianity create these abusers or do cynical, abusive people hijack Christianity for their own purposes? It's important to remember that while the Christian ideology we've discussed here is popular, it's not the only way of thinking or being Christian. Powerful counters to Christian authoritarianism exist within wellestablished Christian thought as well. Liberation theology literally views the Christian God as one which sides with the poor and marginalized in their struggle for justice. Christian authoritarian types like to call liberation theology unbiblical Marxist critical theory and things like that. But given how certain gospel passages talk about the poor and how parts of the book of Acts describe early church communities, Christians with a bent toward radical liberatory justice can make a compelling case. Ultimately though, and I somewhat regret saying this because I would like for there to be a definitive Christian case for liberation theology, I think that when omnipotent beings and personal revelation are allowed to be factored into questions of ethics and literary interpretation, a near infinite number of equally plausible answers can result. Christian literature and tradition can be plausibly interpreted to call for authoritarianism or radical liberation without a person attempting to cynically twist Christianity for their own purposes. That said, I think it is quite obvious that power-hungry men do use Christianity to control others and grift all without being sincere believers. The most powerful people I mentioned here are almost certainly examples of this. So, does Christianity create abusers or do cynical, abusive people hijack Christianity for their own purposes? Yes. Yes to both of these things. And if we want to fight the abuse that comes out of the Christian world one way or another, we need to acknowledge this. Anti-theists, please acknowledge that Christianity does not exist in one true form and therefore abuse is not its one true result. Eradicating Christianity or religion as a whole is not necessary to fight religious harm and foregoing alliances with pro-liberation Christians severely weakens our collective fight against religious hierarchy. Also, creating a new religious hierarchy with anti-theist atheists on top probably is not going to create a particularly free and thriving world. It's almost like hierarchy might be the root of the problem. And Christians acknowledge that writing off all abuse done in the name of Christianity as false Christianity and all abusers as unbelievers turns a blind eye to how Christian thought can plausibly morph into authoritarian dogma. Stopping religious harm means recognizing all ways it can arise, including from within traditions we love. Refusing to do this means letting the abuse continue. Thank you for watching. If you want to come hang out with Taylor and I in person

you can do so on Sunday, December 7th in Austin, Texas. The Atheist Community of Austin, the American Humanist Association, and Genetically Modified Skeptic, that's me, are partnering with Equality Texas for their Rainbow Rights Road Show. We're collecting donations of the items listed on screen so Equality Texas can personally deliver them to LGBTQ communities in need across Texas. The donation drive will take place at the ACA Free Thought Library. That's 1507 West Kanigan Lane in Austin, Texas on December 7th from 12:00 p. m. to 8:00 p. m. Bring your donations. Tour the only atheist community center in the country and hang out with Taylor and me. All right, a special thanks to my patrons for their constant love and support. And praise be unto our lady, River, my top patron and the official savior of this channel. If you want to support my work, subscribe to this channel and check out my second channel link below. I have original unique videos on there. As always, if you are an apostate in need, there are resources linked in the description to help you find community and mental health support. Remember to be kind to others in the comments. And until next time, stay skeptical.