imo he was being super salty about that tendency guys have to blame their anatomy for their bad choices
it’s like “oh i don’t want to be a creepo but my dick has a mind of its own” “well here’s a scissors fix your life”
or maybe, you know, have some damn respect, and don’t pretend you don’t have a choice of whether to be nasty
i think people have a tendency to take jesus literally when he was actually throwing shade, or to take things in this really smarmy martyrish way when they’re actually pretty snippy
i mean “turn the other cheek” sounds like being a doormat until you picture how it would play out: someone smacks you, and you turn and go “do it again, go on, take a swing buddy, does that make you feel better, do you feel like a winner now?” cuz you know what 90% of the time they will get curled up shame toes and shuffle off
tl;dr: no jesus did not actually want you to take a spoon to your eyeballs for babe watching, he wanted you to take responsibility for how you treat people
All of the actions Jesus told his followers to perform are actually passive-aggressive actions meant to oppose and resist Jerusalem’s Roman colonizers. Like,
turning the other cheek is actually a matter of forcing the Roman to either break proper slapping etiquette or to hit you properly- thereby treating you as an equal instead of someone he’s subjugating. If a debtor is taking all your possessions in court, you include the shirt off your back so his greed is causing you to commit public nudity. And when a soldier forces you to carry his equipment (as per the law of the time), you go the extra mile with him- literally carrying his bag beyond the distance that the law stipulates and therefore making the action illegal.
Context matters.
Jesus was a radical, rebellious, snarky twentysomething. Always remember that.
A Jesus post I’m here for.
Canon Jesus is always 100% better than current fanon Jesus
And I mean think about it. Jesus was a millenial. Two thousand years ago, sure, but he was a millenial. Never let bullshit “Christians” tell you otherwise.
If you look at these as the law of obvious consequence- making someone hit you more than they wanted to, keeping a person’s burden after you’re allowed to give it back, shaming a greedy person- they’re all situations where the victim is supposed to act in a way motivated by fear. Remove fear- fear of pain, of shame, of suffering- from the equation, and the victim no longer responds in a way that allows the oppressor to exercise control. This not only undermines the authority of an unjust system, but exposes its most basic flaw: fear is a choice, and government that rules through fear has no real power.
There’s so much here to unpack and love, but I’m so blown over by the “Jesus used snark to tell people to own their shit” concept that the rest of it is going to have to wait.
SubbyLittleKitten 