Evangelicals and Bolsonaro.

With the connection between Bolsonaro and the military dictatorship, I’m a bit surprised that evangelicals want to vote for him, when there are biblical reasons not to do so. Most of these reasons gravitate to the principle of loveing your neighbor, which first appears in Leviticus and is developed throughout the New Testament from Matthew. Those who watched Haddad’s electoral segment on television saw recordings of Bolsonaro praising Ustra and lamenting that the military dictatorship did not kill “some thirty thousand” people of whom some would be innocent. The following text is aimed at those evangelicals who want to vote for Bolsonaro. If you aren’t Brazilian or religious, you may want to do something else.

Before going any further, Haddad really wants to legalize marijuana and abortion. However, neither can be done without the will of the doer. You do not have to abort or use marijuana. Besides, although abortion might become a legal possibility, I would be very happy if you did not abort. After all, according to the Statute of the Child and Adolescent , the mother who can not raise the child can place the kid for adoption without major problems. She does not need to keep the child, so in theory, abortion would be unnecessary: ​​if you can not raise your child, someone else will. Thus, you would only abort, for example, if you wanted to. The evangelical church-goer does not have to abort. The evangelical does not need to smoke anything either. If others do so, it’s not your business.

Suppose Bolsonaro decides to govern with the military dictatorship as a government model (remembering that there is a possibility of a military coup under his government), would that be a biblically acceptable situation? The return of torture? Removal of rights? Censorship? Above all, hate?

It is understandable that, in the face of such insecurity, we turn to hatred and defend drastic measures, but human wrath does not equate divine justice (James 1:20). Whoever hates is in darkness (1 John 2:11) and does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4: 8). That means I can’t hate homosexuals, for example? You can not: there is no person who does not sin and that is why we can receive forgiveness. For example, Rahab was a prostitute, but by working with the spies of Joshua, she was justified (James 2: 24-25). When a certain woman was caught in adultery and taken to Jesus, he said that only those without sin could throw a stone at her. There is no one who does not sin, so we are unfit to punish others for their sins (John 8: 1-11). Why do you want guns? Why does the removal of the Disarmament Statute looks attractive to you? Do you want to do justice with your own hands? Have you not heard that revenge belongs to God (Romans 12:19)? If you hate murder, do not become a murderer.

The commandment in which the whole law is summed up is “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” or, put another way, “do to others what you would like to have done to you” (Matthew 7:12). He who does not love his brother (and God is the father of us all) does not walk with God (1 John 3: 10-11). Thus, the homosexual who does not hate is more likely to be saved than the liar or murderer who accuses him for being homosexual, because the accuser sins three times: once for being a liar or a murderer, twice for nurturing hatred towards another person and a third time for being a sinner who judges another sinner, casting himself as hypocrite. If God only looked at our mistakes, no one would be saved. But that would be unfair. In not God also a God of justice? The homosexual who has done many good deeds is more likely to be saved than the murderer who accuses him and then goes to church. And that’s because the first is more worth being forgiven. I do not even have to touch the subject of racism.

Do you think you can save yourself by going to church and listening to the words? That’s is self-deception: faith alone does not save, because not even Abraham was saved by faith alone (James 1:22). Had Abraham heard and believed, but not acted, would he not have been rejected? In fact, what kind of faith does not bear fruit (James 2:14)? If faith was enough to save, the devil would be saved, because the demons also believe in God (James 2:19). True religion is charity toward the oppressed, as orphans and widows (James 1:27). Bolsonaro wants to take the rights of the working classes, many of whom have children and a wife, and who, in spite of their work, sometimes need help from the government to stay alive. One may say that the worker is worthy of his wages and that those who do not work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10), but the problem here is to take minimum working conditions from those who work. So, despite working, sometimes the worker lacks resources to buy food. We could also argue that receiving government help is like receiving “alms.” So what? Is it a sin to give alms? The prayers and alms of Cornelius Italian were accepted before God as a memorial offering (Acts 10: 1-4). So what does it matter if this is the case?

Finally, a word to those who intend to not vote: not doing a good deed when you can do it is sinning by omission (James 4:17). If you are, for example, a Jehovah’s Witness and can not vote for religious reasons, at least spread this text to others. A hate government is an anti-Christian government and the hatred has begun even before the elections are over. Evangelicals should be ashamed of supporting an overtly aggressive person with their vote.

Does the Bible forbids drinking?

Just a quick post. You see, I have access to the search terms that people use to reach this blog, so I know more or less what people are looking for. So, recently, I noticed an on-off stream of traffic coming from people concerned with what the Bible says about alcohol. So, I think I should give those tykes some few answers.

First of all, it’s not the first time that I notice people finding this blog by looking up lunatic search terms such as “what demon is present when I masturbate”, but it’s the first time I notice such a high interest in the problem of drinking. That’s because I live in Brazil and some churches here forbid alcohol consumption. Let’s start with the question that names this entry: no where. The Bible doesn’t forbid the consumption of alcohol, period. But I notice that some search queries suggest that some religious leaders, such as pastors, are explicitly teaching that it does. For example: one of the search queries is “is it true that the Bible says that we shouldn’t put even a gulp of alcohol in the mouth?”. That’s extremely specific. If I am right, some religious leaders are saying that there is biblical evidence to support that, while, in fact, there is none. On the contrary. So, I’m happy that people are looking those things up, because that means that some people are questioning what the preacher is saying. And that’s great: many of those people are just interested in your money anyway, so they pull new prohibitions from thin air, in hopes of making you feel super guilty for not keeping up with them, raising an urge to attain forgiveness the way they want you to, which means that they try to keep you in their church by making you scared of hell. And, if they need to exploit the fact that the Bible is a huge document that no everyone has time to read, so no one knows what it actually contains, so be it.

The most common drink in biblical accounts is wine. In Genesis 27:25, we see Isaac, son of Abraham and father to Jacob, drink wine with no problem, wine given by his son. In Exodus 29:40, as well as in Leviticus 23:12 and Numbers 15:5-10, among other verses, we see that wine was accepted as offering to God. If wine was an “evil” drink, God wouldn’t accept that as offering. However, wine, because it makes a person feel “elated”, wasn’t supposed to be consumed by people who worked at the temple, at least not before duty, as we see in Leviticus 10:9. Another situation in which wine can not be consumed is when the person vows to not drink it, as we see in Numbers 6:3. But such vow is never mandatory. If I vow, indeed, I must abstain, but even such vow may only be up for a limited time (Numbers 6:20).

Another important thing to notice is that, if wine was an evil drink, Jesus wouldn’t have transformed water in wine, as we see in the second chapter of the Gospel According to John. A lot of people drank from that wine, which was of the best quality (John 2:9).

Someone might ask: “did that wine have alcohol?”. Yes, in Brazil, there’s a lot of a people who think that the wine consumed back then could be 100% alcohol-free. When everyone was speaking in their own native language, and yet everyone was understanding each other, someone asked if those people didn’t drink wine (Acts 2:13). That’s because, from an outsider’s point of view, a scene in which everyone is speaking a different language, while still managing to have an harmonious conversation, must be a prank. Ephesians 5:18 also says that we shouldn’t get “drunk” with wine, but it’s impossible to get drunk from drinking an alcohol-free beverage. That means that the wine back then had alcohol. Even if simple distillation was used, there would be no way, with the technology available back then, to fully isolate the alcohol that is present in a given amount of wine. Even if such method were to be employed, the wine wouldn’t lose all of it’s alcohol.

Last, but not least, wine is recommended by Paul in 1 Timothy 5:23, not to mention it’s also a mandatory element in the Lord’s Supper, which is a solemn christian ritual done in memory of Jesus’ sacrifice. So, the Bible doesn’t forbid wine, but actually encourages it’s responsible consumption. Your preacher is lying to you.

So, knowing that wine isn’t prohibited by the Bible, that wine is actually endorsed by the Bible and that wine is an alcoholic beverage, we can conclude that alcohol consumption isn’t sin, but, at most, you should avoid being drunk. Drink moderately. Are you happy now?

After writing this, I hope the readers who find my blog develop a more critical approach to the teaching given in the church they attend to. While that’s not an exclusively protestant problem (there’s a lot of gratuitous prohibitions among catholics too), remember that the requisites to be a prostestant preacher are really low, that’s why there’s so many of them. A lot of them never even read the Bible completely, not even once, while I read it completely three times already. And we know that faith sells. So, if you see your local pastor saying something fishy, at least look up online to see if what he says has biblical foundation. If he is quoting false references, admit to yourself that you are being fooled. Leave that church and go do something else.