Unpopular Opinion: The Boys get the Bible wrong
Does anyone else ever want to write a carefully sourced email correcting the things, especially what Henry says, that are factually incorrect about the bible?
Warning: I am a cradle Catholic. (Yes, I know, pedophile priests, colonialism, etc, etc.… It makes me just as angry if not more so, because they are using a faith I genuinely love and believe in)
This urge overcame me because while listening to the new Gary Ridgeway episode today, someone, I think Henry, made an offhand comment to the effect that all the women in the Gospels are just there to tempt Jesus. This is not only demonstrably untrue, but in fact the only “temptress” in the Gospels is Salome, the daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, and she and Jesus never meet.
All the other women in the Gospels are either disciples of Jesus, related to Jesus or his disciples, beneficiaries of Jesus’ miracles/ forgiveness, and/or characters in the Parables. (Source: https://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Synoptics_Women.htm)
Heck, in Matthew, Jesus full-on told someone, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.”
A lot of Christian misogyny comes from interpreting either Old Testament scriptures or St Paul out of context. This tendency towards the Madonna/Whore dichotomy in history appears in Christian theology in the centuries after Christ, if I recall correctly, after the religion allied with the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great. And all my homies think this was one of the biggest mistakes Christianity ever made and something the Catholic Church has been struggling to rectify over the last couple of centuries.
Alas, the Roman Catholic Church is a very big ship, and it takes time and significant effort to correct course.
I don’t apologize for this rant. You decided to read this far.
Pax et bonum.