Mastodawn

Pagan Witch Nov 4, 2023

I was talking to a relative yesterday, a christian who was telling me how amazingly blessed they were because they had a need of something that was too expensive new and too difficult to find used and in good shape.

But God hooked them up with someone in their church community who had this thing, no longer needed it, was happy to give it to my relative for free.

They cited another example of being blessed like this when a friend noticed a need they had and found someone in the community who was willing to pay for it for them.

They became quite emotional describing how "blessed" they were.

I wanted so much to tell them:

That wasn't "God" at all, that's communism!
Or as anarchists would call it: Mutual Aid.
This is not God, this is something deeply, essentially, and definitively *human*.

#blessing #communism #MutualAid #anarchism

Hegelian Princess Oct 7, 2023

@RD4Anarchy "that's not God that's communism" omfg

@julieofthespirits It was a revelation!

apophis Oct 7, 2023

@julieofthespirits @RD4Anarchy i saw this reply on my TL and clicked fully expecting this to be a paraphrase of some rightoid reacting to some OT prophet condemning people for not caring for the poor or how the early church "held everything in common" or something

so i was absolutely unprepared for what OP was actually going to be about

Hegelian Princess Oct 7, 2023

@apophis @RD4Anarchy I mean I think that's what a lot of leftists really miss about the social role of a lot of more traditional (read: not megachurch) churches, that they often *do* function as mutual aid networks. I remember growing up, whenever anyone had a baby all the other families took turn cooking meals and bringing it to them, the church ladies making quilts for all the kids when they came of age, etc. And obviously none of those things depend on a belief in God per se, as OP said, it's just communism. But when people seek out community and say they find it at their church, that's often what they're referring to. And I don't think that any leftist org I've ever been in has ever had that level of internal support for each other, which is honestly a massive own

apophis Oct 7, 2023

@julieofthespirits @RD4Anarchy it was seeing this dynamic happen on both ends that got me believing back in the day

Hegelian Princess Oct 7, 2023

@apophis @RD4Anarchy I remember it used to be a term of abuse to refer to "potluck leftists" - people who weren't really interested in radical direct actions and just wanted to show up to potlucks with likeminded people and find a community and maybe engage in a little mutual aid when their comrades were in trouble, and the older I get the angrier I get that people looked down on that

apophis Oct 7, 2023

@julieofthespirits @RD4Anarchy there was a part of my reply that i ultimately deleted, that went like "i've never seen such a dynamic since, and believe it's impossible to achieve it as long as an ideology continues to attract the kind of people who pride themselves in being smarter than others"

there's definitely a huge strain of that in some forms of christianity too, but the *very explicit* pushback against that throughout the scriptures and monastic and hagiographical traditions (at least in the eastern church) is really good (not perfect by any means) at tempering that for many people of that sort

apophis Oct 7, 2023

@julieofthespirits @RD4Anarchy but also

> show up to potlucks with likeminded people and find a community and maybe engage in a little mutual aid when their comrades were in trouble

to discount *that* as not being radical direct action is like a general of an invading army who spends their entire budget on the most advanced weaponry and forgets about food

Hegelian Princess Oct 7, 2023

@apophis @RD4Anarchy yeah like, in all the historical periods in which anarchy had a bigger influence than it does now, there were an awful lot of people like that alongside the expropriators that actually made it into the history books. fish in the sea, etc.

@julieofthespirits @apophis @RD4Anarchy There are a lot of immigrant churches in my neighborhood and this is a huge thing. When a family needs to raise money e.g. they'll sell food in their yard or in front of the church on a weekend and the other members show up and buy some. The church on the corner is having a clothes swap event this very morning. They hire each other and bypass outside businesses and bosses when they can. I feel very lucky to have been included in some of these networks through my neighbors.

HeavenlyPossum Oct 7, 2023

If getting tchotchkes for free is a blessing from God, wait until they hear about the Holocaust.

archlentil Oct 7, 2023

@RD4Anarchy wild. absolutely couldn't be people caring for other people, it must be some greater benevolent authority.

Medea Vanamonde🏳️‍⚧️ ♀Oct 7, 2023

@RD4Anarchy that’s also a manifestation of The Body of Christ as the Community.
Ask them : “Are you of the Body?” And see if they are perplexed or if they light up like a slot machine at payout

mnemonicoverload Oct 8, 2023

@RD4Anarchy
TBF there are individual believers and even some small sects of Christianity that literally think Jesus was a communist, which if you set aside church dogma and some of the more problematic apostles and just look at the purported beliefs and practices of Jesus as described in the Bible it really isn't difficult to see how they might come to that conclusion.

Tina Reynolds Oct 8, 2023

@RD4Anarchy The bible absolutely advocates for socialism so anyone who thinks they're a Christian should be behaving in a charitable way advocating for mutual aid. The real issue is how few Christians actually follow these parts rather than getting het up about sex

Konosocio Oct 9, 2023

@RD4Anarchy God is when it works only for an in-group.

John A Rooke Sep 8, 2024

@RD4Anarchy Much the same thing, perhaps? The only real objection I have to that conception of God is that it might dissuade people from asking themselves whether they are doing enough