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[–]MarkTwainiac 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

The issue that's causing so much trouble isn't simply that the Church of Genderology is similar to a fundamentalist religions, though it is in numerous ways.

The real problem is that those who believe in/belong to the Church of Genderology are behaving as if their fanciful faith has been established as the official state religion in countries like the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and many other places. The adherents of the Church of Genderology and all their allies in the establishment act as though the Western world now is subject to the rule of an authoritarian religious tyranny similar to the Shia Islamic theocracy instituted in Iran in 1979 - a totalitarian state where the Genderists are the supreme rulers and no one else gets a say: No debate!

As a result, the entire population of the Western world is now expected to accept without question all the preposterous claims and tenets of the Church of Genderology, read its sacred texts & regard them as divine truth, gullibly swallow its origin stories, unfailingly obey its commandments, venerate its clergy, religiously follow its rituals, enthusiastically participate in its liturgy, use its arcane & incoherent terminology, honor its holy days, stand in awe of its saints, kowtow to its sacred caste, worship at its altar and partake of its sacraments.

If we don't do all these things, and exactly in the way the Genderologists dictate, then after death we'll be sent to the underworld to suffer eternal damnation and unspeakable horrors forevermore - and until then, the CoG will make our lives hell on earth, particularly if our sex is female and we have the temerity to respond to the mantra "trans rights are human rights" by pointing out that girls & women have some human rights too.

Just as the Genderologists have gone out of their way to craft a theology that is perhaps the most misogynistic in all history, they've also taken great care to insure that the new state religion we are being expected to follow is a particularly strict and cruel one. Due to the impossible demands it makes, demands that change on a frequent basis without public notice, it's inevitable that sooner or later - most likely sooner - each one of us will fall short, slip up and commit a heinous sin like misgendering a Gregor Murray, deadnaming a Caitlyn Jenner or Chuck Clymer, or making reference to "concerns," "safety" or "biological sex," all of which have now been deemed "transphobic dogwhistles" and "hate speech." And when we do commit sin as is bound to happen, each one of us will find there is no forgiveness, no redemption, no way to "do better" and escape pillorying, shunning and exile. Not for us, coz we are apparently heretics, blasphemers and evil to our core.

[–]HeimdeklediROAR 1 insightful - 7 fun1 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 7 fun -  (3 children)

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That TV Tropes entry is written in gibberish. But the gist of it I was able to glean is incredibly dumb. The idea that "everyone is Jesus in purgatory" makes no sense at all coz Jesus didn't go to purgatory. Purgatory and Jesus don't really belong in the same sentence.

Purgatory is the place that RC theology says the souls of people are sent to if they are too sinful for heaven but not so sinful as to deserve damnation in hell. Basically, purgatory is the big waiting room in the sky where your sins are expiated by enduring a partially hellish experience for some of the hereafter rather than the whole shebang.

When I was a child in Catholic school decades ago, I was taught that rather than your whole body being set on fire for all eternity like in hell, in purgatory only your hands and arms to your shoulders and your legs to just above the knee will be on fire - and it will only be for a couple of million years as opposed to forever. 😱

But Jesus didn't need to go to purgatory coz he'd already done enough suffering on earth - so much suffering, the story goes, that he made up for the rest of humanity's sins, or for original sin (it's never been clear to me which sins they meant). The point is, Jesus got to skip purgatory and take the express elevator to heaven not just coz he was the son of god/god himself, but because he was crucified - and prior to his crucifixion he was put through the hell of imprisonment, torture, public shaming, and the hellish long walk to Calvary wearing a crown of thorns and lugging the cross he'd soon be nailed to whilst some in the crowds jeered and spit and the Roman soldiers whipped and kicked him each time he fell.

So an image of Jesus in purgatory does not compute. "Everyone is Jesus in the Judean desert" might work, though. Ditto Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

[–]HeimdeklediROAR 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (1 child)

I believe its referring to Jesus descent into the underworld:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So why is it called "Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory"? Purgatory isn't hell.

Also, the "Harrowing in Hell" story is widely disputed and not taught by many Christian churches. The RCC of my youth didn't teach it. The early NT texts said that in between his death and resurrection, Jesus went to Hades. Hades means

the underworld; the abode of the spirits of the dead (Oxford).

Hades isn't hell. Hell is in Hades, but not all Hades is hell. Like Paris is in France but not all of France is Paris.

The confusion between hell and Hades seems to have come from poor translations of the early New Testament texts from Greek into other languages. https://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/did-jesus-go-to-hell-faq.htm

Plus, even if the harrowing of hell story is taken at face value, by its own account Jesus didn't suffer when he supposedly went to hell - he went there to preach, save souls, say hello and stick it to the devil (his purported doings there vary from account to account).

BTW, some early Christian theologians suggested that during his time in the underworld before his resurrection and ascent into heaven, Jesus did actually visit purgatory - and some say he visited limbo (the place where it used to be said that unbaptised babies went after death). But still, that doesn't fit with the mostly incoherent TV tropes writeup you linked to coz: a) the idea that J went to purgatory is very obscure, & little known, even amongst devout Christians with a bent for theological arcana; b) if he went to purgatory, Jesus still wouldn't have suffered there; and c) Hollywood TV writers tend not to be very good when it comes to grasping the nuances of Christian theology, as evidenced by their constant mis-portrayal of the meaning of the "immaculate conception," which they erroneously conflate with the doctrine of the virgin birth.

That TV trope would be far better summed up by calling it "Everybody Is Jesus" or "Everybody Is Jesus on the Cross." Coz pretty much everyone has a basic grasp of the the Jesus crucifixion story & grasps cross imagery. Which IIRC, E.M. Forster famously made fun of in his essay "My Wood."