God Damn it, I Don't Even Know

[attackfish]

I swear, the next time a Christian tries to compare the Holocaust to the death of Jesus, I may just start screaming.  I mean what the hell?  How is that even a thing you say to someone?  And yes, this is not the first time I have heard this one.   God fucking damn.

Comments

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

No, no, no.

If Jesus was alive during WWII in Europe, he'd have died in the Holocaust and Zyklon B canisters are not as fashionable as crosses.

I once tiraded cruelly that Jesus did come back. He came back in the Middle ages and bigots killed him in the Crusades. He came back to Medieval Spain and bigots expelled him or burned him at the stakes. He came back to 17th century Poland and bigots murdered him again. He came back at beginning of the Russian revolution and bigots sent him to Siberia. He came back during the Holocaust and bigots gassed him. Can anyone blame him for not coming back anymore?

Sorry, but true.

[floranna.livejournal.com]

What?

Yes, Jesus did die in a horrible way but it DOES NOT compare to the suffering of millions of jews during or before holocaust.

Dungeonwriter said it better.

*seethes*

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I think aside from the sheer insult of comparing the deaths of millions of people, a scale that it is impossible for a human being to truly grasp, to the death of one person, which forget being Jewish, offends me as a human being, there is the assumption that Judaism is about the Holocaust in the same way Christianity is about the death of Jesus. The Holocaust was not an experience of the Jewish faith, but of the Jewish people. It's not a part of Jewish religious life and practice, except in the way we try to understand such a tragedy, honor the dead, and support the living. Individual Jewish people may derive some meaning from their own experience with the Holocaust, but for many of us devout Jews, there is only the raw fact that millions upon millions of people were murdered for no reason at all.

There's also the impression I get from some Christians that in a Christian context, the Holocaust "saved" the Jews the way the death of Jesus saved the Christians. There aren't enough nos in the English language to express how despicable that idea is.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This is the thing that so many gentiles don't seem to grasp. Jesus's death happened once, and it changed everything for Christianity. The Holocaust was just one more in a long line of times we have been hunted down and murdered. The only thing that makes the Holocaust different is scale.

But oh what a scale.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

What what? I mean... what?

Sorry, can't get more coherent than that. How does such a thought ever cross anyone's mind? Holy fuck, what is the matter with people?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I know. And every time somebody tells me this, I have to look at them, and not hit them and say calmly that I don't think its the same thing at all, and then they get all offended. This is why I can't take living in the South much longer. Look up the definition of microaggression, and you see a picture of a sweet Southern churchgoer telling a Jewish person that the Holocaust is like the death of Jesus.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

Well, drawing from your explanation of their thinking in response to floranna, maybe it's a clumsy attempt ("clumsy" as in "unimaginably offensive") to imbue the senseless deaths of so many with some kind of meaning so it wouldn't all be for naught. Of course that just adds another level of offensiveness, sigh.

While you're waiting to get out of there, and fast, maybe you could find some way to microagress them back. Compare your skipping lunch to Civil War-era deprivations or something. But aw hell, we take the high road, right. And it's not like the minority is ever allowed to feel safe making totally off-color remarks.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Exactly, they're trying, they're really trying to be empathetic, which is why when instead of giving them a pat on the back, I point out that what they said is actually really horrible, even when I'm really nice about it, they get angry with me, because they're trying to be good people.

I have noticed lately that when someone says something like this to me, I get a particular smile on my face, that means "You just said something unspeakable to me, and you have no idea, and I would tell you, but you would get mad, and nice Jewish/disabled/queer/female kids grow up learning never to make Gentiles/non-disabled people/straight people/men mad."

[water-soter.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to say in this regard, only to offer my love and support. As a Christian I can only say that whatever denomination he belongs to, you should probably add that as well since he/she is an insult to the rest of us.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I don't know what denomination this specific woman is, but I have heard it before from people of several different denominations. I think it's one of those things where denomination is less of a factor than this sort of membership and participation in this overtly Christian Protestant subculture, the sort of people who aren't content with simply being Christian and living a Christian life, but need to replace secular institutions with religious ones, like listening to Christian music, playing Christian board games, doing Christian yoga... This is the default in the South in a way that it wasn't anywhere else I've lived. Christians here who don't want to take part in this culture have to make a conscious choice not to, no matter what denomination they are. There are these narratives that I hear, like comparing the Holocaust to the death of Jesus, or the Jewish friend who converted upon reading the New Testament, or the way motherhood seems to always be described with the words "highest calling" that cross denomination, but are part of a generalized Christian subculture that many Christians, most in fact, outside of the American South and parts of the Midwest.

The thing is, I know the woman who said this to me this specific time. She's very nice, very sweet, and she really does mean well. This was an attempt to be empathetic. That's what makes it so galling.

[water-soter.livejournal.com]

I can't really say anything to that. I was raised a Christian my whole life and I have never heard anything like this. At all. But I think this has more to do about individuals than an entire culture. I don't want to argue because I see no point in it. People will always be idiots no matter the religious, cultural, national, etc background.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to explain it, it's like there are Christians, many of whom are great people, some of whom are not (because people are people) and then, entirely separate from that is this Christian subculture. I need a better word for it, or to use quotations, or something, because American culture is Christian. This is something else. this "Christian" subculture is absolutely not about Christianity as most Christians understand it. And it is very much something that outside certain places like the South, if you're not part of it, whether you're Christian or not, you never have to have any real contact with it. I would think it was individuals, but the same phrases, ideas, etc. pop up over and over, which tells me that they're getting it from somewhere.