Christianity and Colonization
I would like to imagine that Christianity has some kind of innocent, well-meaning origin story with good intentions to help people with difficult lives or whatever. But if it did, somewhere along the way, it lost its way and jumped the shark.
Christianity is DARVO writ large. I've just written about how DARVO works for individuals and that post is here.
The idea that there is some loving God looking out for you in specific is broken on the face of it. If he loves everyone, then having him on your side is essentially meaningless. If God is equally for everyone, he's no one's ally.
You cannot both deeply care about the nutcase serial killer who randomly kills people who did nothing to them and also deeply care about their victims. You need to pick one.
If the multiple people they killed all abused them and this was repeat self defense and you are a loving God, cool if you want to go to bat for them and get people to understand they are a victim of circumstance and they are a tragic figure who needs some love and understanding and you would have done the same thing in their shoes.
If you are a God and you know they are just angry and irresponsible and don't want to grow up and take responsibility for their actions and just want to hurt people "because someone else hurt them first" and you look out for them, you clearly have no love for their innocent victims who were chosen randomly or because they look like someone that hurt someone once or just wrong place, wrong time and sucks to be you.
If you are Christian and you want to try to understand why people do seemingly terrible things because you have a strong sense of justice, let me suggest you go into psychology or criminal forensics and try to be even handed about getting to the bottom of things and try to be open minded until you have the details and don't jump to conclusions "because killing people is BAD" and wait to see if maybe it was self defense.
But if you want to argue that nutcase serial killers just need a little love and understanding and you don't have any for their dead victims because there's no emotional rush from a dead guy emoting about how happy they are you UNDERSTAND, please get therapy. You Got Issues.
People who engage in DARVO are people who feel THEY have a RIGHT to hurt people while simultaneously insisting no one is allowed to hurt them or EVEN try to DEFEND themselves. They are people who play the victim card while intentionally preying upon and abusing others.
Agreeing with this insane social construct is a recipe for guaranteeing that things get steadily worse socially forever for everyone and the people who get punished the hardest are responsible people who say "the Buck Stops Here" and CHOOSE to not abuse others even though someone else hurt them first.
The entire POINT of LAW ENFORCEMENT is MAKING bad people STOP their SHIT. They ENFORCE the societally agreed upon rules we put in writing and label laws.
Christianity tends to be the opposite of THAT. Christianity is brainwashing that says "The absolute most awful people NEED the most love and understanding and forgiveness and kindness and second chances etc etc etc."
One guy writing a book or something about a court case spoke with the Catholic priest sitting next to the killer in court and told him "You're being used." And after that, the priest showed up in court to metaphorically hold the guy's hand but stopped wearing his vestments to court.
He stopped allowing himself to symbolically say to everyone "God loves even this guy! He just needs a little understanding and FORGIVENESS and you should like have him write 500 times on the chalkboard killing is bad and let the poor schmuck go."
You don't make a NICE world by ACTIVELY REWARDING the most depraved monsters for their life of debauchery and depravity with tea and sympathy and liberal use of second chances based on Christian compassion instead of second chances used sparingly and only in cases of affirmative evidence that this person is unlikely to do that again.
Everything I know indicates that unearned second chances actively grows problem behavior by convincing people with no conscience that people are CHUMPS and if they whine and cry and put on a good show, they can fast talk their way out of anything.
Society is a complex organism and its cells are individual people and when specific people become a cancer upon society and cannot be cured, you must cut them out to protect the health of this organism and ensure its survival.
Historically, Europe cut out a lot of people by shipping them to the Americas -- a "new world" mostly CHOSEN by misfits willing to risk death to get a do-over someplace else without aggravating neighbors they didn't agree with -- and Australia -- a PENAL colony where they DUMPED people they wanted to BANISH and wash their hands of forever.
Banishment is a long standing human practice and it's TYPICALLY a sentence of DEATH. Creating a COLONY in Australia of murderers and criminal thugs and saying "Figure out how to survive." was a kindness to the criminals giving them a SHOT at survival.
But it wasn't a kindness to Native Australians. It was an extremely unkind, unloving thing to do to them.
The American colonies were similarly a do over for people most likely incapable of playing nice with their neighbors and so tired of trying they were ready to say "Give me liberty or give me death." with deeds rather than words.
And similarly it wasn't a kindness to Native Americans who were disenfranchised and had the human refuse of Europe dumped in their lands and granted superior rights to the existing citizens of these lands.
The ONLY solution I know of which actually protects the RIGHTS of other people is EXECUTION of the kind of criminal scum who cannot be reformed and who commit atrocities habitually. [1]
Locking them up forever is demanding that other people feed them, clothe them and house them while they in no way are contributing members of society. It risks having them escape and continue their crime spree. It places a higher value on their right to life than on the rights of decent people to safety and happiness and peace of mind while essentially enslaving society with a permanent tax on everyone else.
Executing more people is perhaps what Europe SHOULD have done rather than pollute the Americas and Australia with their TRASH.
Christian ideology and promoting the idea that ALL people should equally have rights and get second chances etc. was a significant driving force behind colonization.
And it only has any logical consistency that "God loves all people equally and therefore all people deserve opportunities to be banished instead of executed in hopes of starting over elsewhere and blah blah blah blah" IF you conveniently define people deserving all this love and kindness as Christian colonizers and intentionally exclude the existing citizens of the lands you are "politely" invading by showing up and building a house and pretending you are minding your own business and not hurting anyone.
And we all know that is exactly what happened. Christians tried to recruit the "savages" of these huge lands as converts to Christianity and if they didn't, then fuck 'em, they aren't really people deserving of rights if they aren't even giving lip service to our religion.
They committed genocide in the name of their loving God who loves all people by labeling non Christians as non people.
And to this day the Catholic Church has horrifying practices like relocating pedophile priests without warning the new congregation -- which is defacto aiding and abetting child molestation -- instead of firing child molester priests as unfit to serve as stewards of morality for an organization nominally in the business of teaching people how to live right.
Footnote
[1] Some people commit "victimless crimes" and there are systemic root causes for the behavior of some career criminals.
For example, I think it's likely that addicts are literally self medicating and would stop if you cured whatever was underlying that and we just currently don't have good answers for most addicts because most desperately want to stop. Plus, taking illicit drugs doesn't per se harm other people.
So I'm not saying "All career criminals should be executed." Please don't pretend I am.