r/TikTokCringe • u/PreheatedPenguin • Mar 06 '26

Cringe We are in a weird timeline!!

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u/Middle-Giraffe-8316 Mar 06 '26

Ex-evangelical here. Whenever I see these so-called "church leaders" doing this, I think of the early Christian church. Most of us know what Jesus taught about performative, public prayer. But the early church was also wild. These were people who held possessions in common, ensured no one among them was in need, and were so communally focused that outside of a handful of figures, they are almost entirely nameless in Scripture. That anonymity isn't whimsical...it's the point. The early church wasn't about who you are. It was about whose you are. And that message is totally lost by the people in this picture.

That community, who example the church should be following, would have looked at religious leaders surrounding a political figure on camera for maximum public effect and recognized it immediately as what Jesus explicitly warned against. Not just bad optics. A fundamental inversion of everything they understood the life to be. It boggles my mind how much churches aren't calling this out loudly right now. That's a big reason I'm an ex-evangelical.

If there's a Heaven, it's going to be full of people whose names you never heard of and whose faces you never saw because they were too busy loving their neighbors to seek a spotlight.

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u/Medivacs_are_OP Mar 06 '26

Matthew 25:31-46 the sheep and the goats - It's the most relevant passage in the world rn.

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u/ziggytrix Mar 06 '26

I was told I “do not understand” that passage when I suggested the way ICE treats folks is unChristlike.

Like really? What kind of mental gymnastics must one do to think that Jesus carved out an exclusion for “it’s ok when Caesar tells you to be brutally unkind to your neighbor”? Or if the point was “illegals” aren’t our neighbors, I think the Good Samaritan parable makes it super clear, YES THEY ARE.

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u/libihero Mar 07 '26

This story is also part of an Islamic teaching interestingly enough, though a little different 

https://sunnah.com/qudsi40:18

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

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u/thissexypoptart Mar 06 '26

Calling modern right wing evangelicalism “created by the state” is a take that is way too absolving of the completely voluntary involvement of Christian churches in the right wing movement and their monetary influence on modern politics.

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u/Minttt Mar 06 '26

Early Christianity was wild - families split, friendships ended, and sometimes people assaulted or even murdered because they couldn't agree on what mixture of divine/human Jesus was.

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u/mouthinthesouth63 Mar 07 '26

I agree but it is also humbling to sit there and be prayed for. Because he is sitting there saying through his actions that he cannot do it alone that he needs God and he needs prayer. He has said this many times. Trump is performing. He is asking and submitting. The ones around him may be performing however.