That's a feature, not a bug. Christianity, and other religions, have so many precepts and some of them so strict that it is virtually impossible to be a perfect Christian while being a human made of flesh and bone. If shame and repentance weren't such important pillars of the faith, no one would ever bother with organized religion.
Not really.
1: Jesus mentions in Luke towards his address towards the Pharisees that the rigid interpretations of the laws the high priests expected people to follow or pay the price was a tactic which drove people away from salvation, not towards it.
2: Most of the laws outside of the covenant itself (which is strictly the 10 commandments), were laws which had such harsh penalties due to their positions in the desert. Leviticus states homosexuality was an abomination and that they should be put to death. But abomination means that which brings plague and pestilence. In other words, the reason adultery and homosexuality were both dealt with death is very simple, they're desert nomads, an std could lead them to extinction of the ancient Hebrews. It's also why many of the laws against crops and fabrics make 0 sense today. Back then they were far more strict because a small tribe of people who were already incredibly thin after genocide and slavery could easily die out in the desert.
3: The old law is still sin and thus is still to be heavily discouraged, for example, adultery and homosexuality are still vices, but the punishment for both is simply to be discouraged while a more christ-like 1 man 1 woman straight sex is heavily encouraged. This discouragement of vice and promotion of salvation is one of the reasons Christianity was and still is so effective. Jesus talked to sinners of all kinds and talked down upon the hypocrisy of the elite. It's also why Christianity often lifts people out of sin more than other Abrahamic faiths did. Your punishment was simply you weren't encouraged, thus you felt more inclined to stop sinning not out of shame or ridicule but out of desire to feel the joy the others felt. In other words, you joined Christians with Christ because you wanted to know why they felt so happy. IE, it was called gospel and evangelism for a reason.
4: There are still two unforgiveable sins. Pedophilia is to be dealt with by being drowned with your neck attached to a whetstone for defiling the innocence of a child, and blasphemy which means to claim yourself a false idol above God is considered unforgiveable and all who do are never to see the kingdom of God.
Now, many people break various sins of the old testament, even the old mosaic covenant of the 10 commandments. But most don't break what I laid out in number 4. This is important because many in trump's cabinet not only have, but they also focused quite highly on consequences laid out in the old testament for sin and vice without looking at any context of where people were when those laws were laid out or why they weren't in the covenant itself. And also because they heavily discourage those sins while partaking in them.
It's why everyone focuses on catholic priests even though they had a pretty small problem compared to the rest. If 1% of catholic preists, men standing to speak for god are pedophiles it's a tragedy. If 5% of sexually degenerate weebs are pedophiles it's a wonder it isn't higher. The expectations you set up by being moral authorities makes it so any form of hypocrisy is seen as worse and doing the worst form of hypocrisy is downright diabolical. Hence why preachers and preists or politicians wishing to announce themselves as christian authority who are homophobic being gay or worse pedophiles is not seen the same as a regular worshiper or especially a degenerate being a pos. It's to be expected that the freak in rainbow dildos from head to toe is a child molester, he should be dealt with but it's not really something most will find shocking, we have eyes after all.
But when someone speaks for God as a moral authority, they are putting themselves at right below God's level, and when someone who speaks for God is such an appalling piece of shit. It's disgusting because of who they are supposed to be, not just what they did. Moral arbiters being degenerate hypocrites will always be more shameful than degenerates being degenerate. We know the degens are faggots, they told you they were.
So no, religion isn't a way to shame people into obedience. You're a preddit atheist if you think that. It can be used that way. But it is a way to keep traditions of people who did great things in your past, to keep the oral and written traditions of your culture alive, and to make sure you don't lose sight of you are. Pharisees do indeed exist in every religion to do exactly as you described. But they exist in nonreligious ideologies as well. I've been around enough forums to know no god is needed to be a pharisee for some arbitrary system of rules. We laugh at moral puritans being degenerate hypocrites because the shame of someone telling you what to do being exactly who they tell you not to be is blasphemy, and as many of us are Christian, mocking the pharisees is just as much our calling as discouraging sin and encouraging salvation.
Also, being represented by a bunch of drug addicted pedophiles and a man with heart disease who met little foot in real life who might also be a drug addicted pedophile himself sucks even worse than the drug addicted pedophile with cancer who worked night shift with Earl Sinclair who surrounded himself with whiny karens. And I hate it. The us president, much like the us economy is on life support, and as for who's killing both the us economy and president? Well, the call is coming from inside the house. I guess a dying morbidly obese retard who is slowly killing himself by eating his life away sadly is a good representation of the sad sorry state the us is in though.
