LOL.
Saul/Paul never had a change of heart, he was always a RWA. He went from persecuting Christians to persecuting
for Christians.
Jesus : Paul :: Lenin : Stalin
They each fucked it up for the rest of us.
Too short, read more:
My abbreviated history of Christianity:
- Here’s John the Baptist. He’s a crazy old man but essentially the same as any prophetic Jeremiah of the OT. But he’s in the EXACT right place at the right time, because…
- Here’s Jesus. He’s a Good Guy with good ideas. There are a lot of these guys floating around in the Levantine soup – it’s like Great Awakening Upstate New York -- but he makes it big.
- Here’s Paul. He’s a right wing authoritarian. He goes from persecuting Christians to persecuting for Christians. His epistles are chock full of anger, paranoia, and hysteria. He’s the villain of the piece.
- Jesus does his thing, with or without the third day (season to taste). Paul wins the succession struggle. Jesus : Paul :: Lenin : Stalin. Christianity starts to get nasty.
- Here comes Augustine. Another jerk. After half a life as an irresponsible playboy he fucks over the woman who loves him, crawls home to an overbearing and shrill fanatical mother, and then spits out tomes demonizing women and setting Christianity on the road to misogyny for the next 1500 years.
- The monastic orders house Volcels who spend their time lusting after the women they can’t have and tweeting about how all women are whores out of spite. There is the occasional Good Guy among them but he either keeps his head down or gets murdered by the Episco-PO-lice.
- Holy Mother Church monetizes the operation and the Petrine mafia runs an extractive commercial empire like the US. We use missiles, Rome uses missals (get it?!, nyuck nyuck).
- Luther and Calvin show up, call BS on the money part but lean into the women and sex hating again because monks are bent in the head.
- Post-Enlightenment, sane people either give it all up as a terrible detour or vaguely embody Jesus' original good ideas while ignoring all the reactionary or commercial idiocy. The authoritarians double down on the viciousness and are DTF where F stands for murder. Christendom splits into thirds: intellectuals who've seen enough; kind average people who ignore the BS and stress the good lessons; and sociopath wolves leading cretinous sheep to the slaughter.