Mammon

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It simply means you don't put humans below money.
Money is not more important than human life that is all.
Money should not make people suffer.
Jesus was against any kind of suffering virtually on every page, if you were true believer.
If money is making people happy and suffer less than its not a sin in my opinion, because they serve the human needs not the other way around.
Humans who make others suffer by means of financial gain are representation of mammon.
They cannot be close to Christ if they look to make others suffer.
Christ eliminated suffering where every he could.

So I found out a big tax loophole for certain religious non-profits. The business income of these religious non-profits are totally tax-free.Churches have to pay tax on some business income but these apostolic associations for-profit company income is totally tax-free.

Communist leaders, even Marx himself, understood the power of religion to control the population, the “opiate of the masses.” This was one of the reasons Ayn Rand and others were so opposed to religion. Christians were often persecuted in the Soviet Union. But once their leaders figured out an absolute ban on religion would create martyrs and doom the party, they switched tactics to regulate and control religion.

In the case of the Soviets, the religion was not a state religion in the sense that the state established a religion and forced you to practice it. They wanted to get rid of religion if they could. What they did was restrict options to only religions that supported and promoted the communist party. It was supporting the state that had top priority, not worship or spreading the gospel. That’s not freedom of religion.

In China Christianity has less influence. My understanding is that the Catholic Church is the “official” Christian church in China and conforms to party demands. There’s debate as to whether the Chinese Catholic Church is a true Catholic Church. I know that there is an active underground Christian movement that exists apart from the state-regulated religions. Meetings happen in homes rather than out in the open. From time to time police will charge into homes, wave guns around, threaten worshipers, and leave. It’s the same problem that exterminating Christians will create martyrs and nationwide sympathy for them. So raids on house churches are pretty much symbolic. The main point being that religion is allowed if it aligns with state ideology. As an independent movement that liberates individuals, religion is a threat to the state.

Christianity is certainly not a threat to the state. Any time I’ve been in a Baptist church, I’ve almost always seen an American flag. Part of that is due America being founded on the principle of religious freedom. We are free to worship according to our conscience here. The New Testament also commands Christians to submit to government authority within reason and only as far as government interest doesn’t conflict with Christian values. We can’t both be Christian and not spread the gospel. We wave the American flag in our churches out of respect for the freedom we have to worship and to show we don’t intend to make trouble for our government authorities. Communism assumes that non-aligned churches will make trouble for the Party when Christianity doesn’t assume any relationship between religion and government. Separation of church and state is essentially a Christian value. Communism doesn’t want anything separated from the state.

Yeah look at how well that's working out for the Uyghurs


I'm sure a tankie like you will find some way to deny it though.

Sounds like someone was pretty controlling if he said "do this thing that I said God said to do or you'll get some terrible punishment I made up".

Uyghurs aren't the only Muslim group in China though, SkinnedWolf explained this to me in some detail.

This doesn't make it any less deplorable, but the issues between China and their Uyghur population aren't reflective of a broader anti-Muslim issue. It's not like Kazakhs or Hui or Kyrgyz (etc) are experiencing similar state interference.

If it was simply religion, it would almost certainly involve all Muslim Chinese.
It's more complicated and much more colonial in nature. The area has never fully integrated into a Chinese identity, despite having a long history of coming under Chinese control.

It's severely underdeveloped and banditry is still a way of life for many. China wants to develop it to suit their own interests, but the locals kill and rob the colonizers. I'm not sure I entirely blame them.

Further complicating things is that China does attempt to bring some benefits as well, but as is common in these scenarios, it's often viewed as cooperating with colonizers.

It's a lawless backwater that has many people who benefit from it remaining that way and even more who are willing to tolerate that if it means being left alone. China, both because of resources and historic claims, seems unwilling to accept that.

It's probably as bad as we hear in terms of severity, but not as widespread because vocational schools (for example) sometimes get mischaracterized as additional concentration camps. There's also China's tendency to be heavy handed and punish people who are only tangentially connected to violent groups.

It's likely to be sad no matter how things unfold.