(16 votes, average: 4.94 out of 5)
Loading...Now *here’s* a challenging post, by Platinum member Doug Wadeson. Read it and see! Doug will be happy to reply to responses.
Many thanks Doug. Others of you who want to do a post — go for it.
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Jesus is generally thought of as a great moral teacher, but I have heard that questioned on occasion. For example, Jesus said, “Do not show opposition against an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other toward him also” (Matthew 5:39). Really?! Does Jesus want us to be target practice for bullies? Won’t that just enable and embolden them? And on a society scale, if America is attacked are we not supposed to defend ourselves? Otherwise evil will win. A real sore point for some people is that Jesus never condemned slavery, which was a common institution in his day (e.g., Matthew 10:24, 24:46, etc.). Apologists sometimes rationalize this by explaining that slavery was not that bad in the Roman empire; it was more like indentured servitude. Yet a truly wise seer would have anticipated the horrors of slavery in centuries to come and spoken out against it, instead of allowing his own words to be used in defense of slavery. Right? And a real sticking point here in affluent America is that Jesus said “none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions” (Luke 14:33). Now what sense does that make?! Won’t that just make all disciples poor and in need? How then are they supposed to help others?
The British author D. H. Lawrence’s final book was about the Book of Revelation and he makes an interesting contention.[1] In Revelation the Christian martyrs are calling for God’s vengeance on their enemies (Revelation 6:10), which seems contrary to the teaching of Jesus to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (I don’t think he meant pray for their punishment!) (Matthew 5:44). Why this change in tone from the time of Jesus to the late 1st Century? Lawrence contended that it was a result of the Christians’ frustration with the impractical teachings of Jesus. The saints had faithfully gone the route of non-violence, passivity and asceticism, and all it got them was hardship, persecution and death.[2] Lawrence thought the problem was that Jesus’ teachings might work on an individual level, but not on a societal level. The Christian society built on the teachings of Jesus simply did not work. No wonder the saints were so disheartened and even vengeful.
I would like to suggest that Jesus’ teachings are in fact good and useful, but you have to consider three things: 1) the context of Jesus’ teachings, 2) his teaching style, and 3) you have to look below the surface to the core.
Jesus tells us the context of his teaching right from the outset of his ministry: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel [good news]” (Mark 1:15). Jesus, following the lead of John the Baptizer, preached that the end of the age was at hand and the kingdom of God was imminent. The focus of his teaching therefore was to prepare people for the kingdom of God, not to overthrow or reform the Roman empire or human society in general. In the kingdom of God all will be set right. True justice will reign. The wealthy and powerful will no longer prey on the poor and the weak. The mighty will be brought down and the meek raised up. Hunger, sickness, poverty – even death will be done away with. That is why one could accept a slap in the face, or if forced to carry a load one mile, carry it two. These are temporary injustices, but those who live for God’s kingdom will soon experience an eternal righteous existence. Slavery is a non-issue because it will not exist in God’s kingdom. Possessions do not matter because in God’s kingdom He will provide all you need. And the end of the age is coming soon – in your lifetime! (e.g., Mark 13:30, 14:62) There is no long-term society or distant future to worry about!
The problem, of course, is that the end did not come. Jesus and his generation passed. The next generation passed. Still no kingdom of God. Devout Christians who seriously implemented Jesus’ teachings in their lives were suffering. You see a suggestion of this in 2 Peter 3:4 as some complained, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” The martyrs in Revelation cry out, ““How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” The problem was not the scope of Jesus’ teachings, individual vs. societal, as Lawrence thought, but rather the temporal aspect: they work when the kingdom of God is at hand, but break down when applied over the long term.
Jesus’ teaching style needs to be considered, particularly the use of hyperbole. Hyperbole is an intentional exaggeration for emphasis and effect. A good example of this in Jesus’ teaching is found in Mark 10:25: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” The image of pushing a camel through the eye of a needle is so extreme as to be comical but it makes the point: it is very hard, virtually impossible.[3] When speaking of adultery he says, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you…” (Matthew 5:29). It is not that Jesus wants you to go around with one eye (you can be blind and still lust, of course!), but he is again using an extreme illustration to drive home his point of how serious this is. When Jesus teaches that you cannot be his disciple unless you give up all you own possessions, perhaps it is another use of hyperbole, the point being to not allow your possessions to possess you, but instead be generous and eager to share.
This leads to the third point: look deeper to the underlying meaning. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) Jesus goes through a number of Mosaic laws and teaches his followers to go deeper. Refraining from murder is not enough; the real goal is to not hate. Avoiding the act of adultery is not enough; seek not to lust. Don’t swear an oath; just be true to your word. I think it is reasonable to view Jesus’ more extreme teachings in the same way. There may be those who can live without any possessions, but for most of us simply being less materialistic and more generous would be a major accomplishment and would help our society. Turn the other cheek? Think how much better relationships could be if we responded to some insult with thought and consideration rather than mindlessly retaliating. Even on a national level, must every incident be met with escalation in kind? ““But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44). We may always need police and the military to maintain order, but how much better might the world be if we could move beyond hatred of enemies to actually care about them as fellow humans in a world we share together?
If you take Jesus’ teachings at face value and mindlessly try to implement them I do not doubt that you may find yourself frustrated and disheartened (and poor and beat up!). Life is too complex to break it down into simple laws for living. But for those who take the time to read, think, discuss and even argue, I think Jesus’ teachings have much merit. And even if we find a teaching of Jesus that is hard to swallow I suspect the process of reasoning through it will still have a positive impact on our understanding of how best to live, as individuals and as a society.
[1] “Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation” was first published posthumously in 1931.
[2] Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was very sporadic, but did occur such as under Nero, and then during Domitian’s reign (89-96), which may have been the persecution alluded to in Revelation.
[3] I had a Lebanese friend tell me that “camel” is a corruption of the Aramaic word for “rope.” Trying to thread a rope through the eye of a needle instead of a thread makes more sense than pushing a camel through, but is still impossible.
Excellent post, Doug!
In the Jewish tradition, the two great teachers Hillel and Shammai are presented as constantly disagreeing with wildly divergent interpretations. Hillel is often the moderate, realistic, compassionate teacher, while Shammai has a harsh tone and his teachings may seem unrealistic, but he and his students were zealous for the law. Jesus is often thought of as a student of Hillel (eg, the golden rule is attributed to Hillel), but he was also a student of Shammai (eg, against divorce). The Jewish tradition handled the differences between the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai by imagining a voice from heaven telling the rabbis that the teachings of Hillel were to be followed in this world, but the teachings of Shammai would be followed in the world to come. Similarly, Jesus’ extreme teachings also make sense in the light of Kingdom of God, which has drawn near.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts. I think something missing from most churches is the ability to debate, argue and question the teachings of religion, rather than the usual pressure to conform to the “correct” teachings. With Jesus I think it is worth examining his extreme teachings and distilling their merit, rather than throwing them out because he got the timeline wrong.
I think the trait of not allowing serious debate and argumentation over the tenets of belief is common to ALL human belief systems. I have visited New Age forums where the tolerance for alternative arguments is cause for immediate on-line banishment. People are people.
True!
This is really good!
Thank you!
Why would we think that early Christians followed Jesus’ teachings to the letter any more than modern Christians do?
From external evidence, such as Pliny for one example, we know them to have been highly moral people, good citizens, who took care of their own members as best they could. They (at least some of them) bore up under social pressure and persecution without causing trouble, with the possible exception of their interactions with Jews in some cases. As of the time of the Didache, say 100CE, Jewish Christians were still proclaiming Jesus’ teachings, but Paul seems not to have done so, but rather focused on atonement and faith, as well as morality and order and peaceful lives. Those things incorporate the core of Jesus’ teachings without specifically requiring Christians to offer themselves up as targets for abuse. Although, Paul also teaches that in severe circumstances one should rely on faith rather than resistance.
As for early Christians following Jesus’ teachings “to the letter,” it must have been very challenging indeed since most people learned from oral tradition and preaching, and that presents plenty of room for omission, distortion, even outright error. As you point out, a great evangelist like Paul didn’t even put much emphasis on the specific teachings of Jesus (as far as we know). And it took a long time for a written record of Jesus’ teachings to come together. Still, as you point out there are early sources suggesting that early Christians understood the gist of Jesus’ teachings and tried to apply them, with mixed results.
Thanks for this, Douglas. It’s very well done.
Thank you for taking the time to read it!
I perhaps find this less challenging than others. There is an expansive history of multi-level interpretation in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic circles. Folks like Gurdjieff and Ouspenksy took this to new levels with their intellectualized spiritualism and crazily dense writings. It makes for a curious kind of “cherry picking” where anyone can find some kind of support for their aspirations, folk metaphysics, and derive (at best) some virtuous direction in their personal lives. The matrix of apocalyptic beliefs in some evangelical circles (despite the obvious referents to the era as Bart shows) illustrates this nicely.
There is an interesting coda to this, however: what makes the specific faiths that have large followings and long-term viability successful? Is it the right balance of moral hyperbole and looseness of message? Is it just a pinball flowing through contingencies that worked out?
Thanks for your thoughts. As for “cherry-picking,” I said to another commenter that we all make up our own religion by extracting what we want from our religious texts (or secular texts, for that matter). As for your questions, I wish I knew why some religions thrive, even ones that I find puzzling, if not ludicrous in some ways. The human mind is a curious thing. I suspect social and cultural aspects override the technical aspects of religion.
I absolutely agree that the books of the New Testament should be read in the context of the times in which they were written, and specifically in the context of the belief in an imminent coming of God’s kingdom. In that context the words of Jesus (or perhaps the words ascribed to Jesus) make sense. The cry of the martyrs for vengeance in Revelations 6:10 doesn’t make much sense unless their persecutors are still alive on earth.
We often criticize people who read all four gospels as a single story, mashing them all together and ignoring the inconsistencies between them. Just to play devil’s advocate here, is looking for the deeper meaning to Jesus’s teaching, or reinterpreting them in light of the fact that nearly two millenia have now passed and the end has not yet come, not a form of making your own religion? Your interpretations of the deeper meaning do have much merit, but none are unique or original to Christianity.
Thanks for your thoughts. I think we all “make our own religion,” as we sift through our religious texts and keep what we like and ignore what we don’t. I think as one examines the teachings of Jesus even if you end up rejecting some of them you have learned something from the experience, even if it’s just crystallizing your own thoughts about morality. And I agree, the underlying morality in Jesus’ teachings is not unique; there are common themes that different religions, philosophers and atheists tend to agree on.
Thank you for the thought provoking post and your kind response to my thoughts. I agree with all you have said, but lately have found myself with questions for some people who claim to be Christians. These include how you can claim Christ is divine if you deny the resurrection, and if you deny Christ’s divinity, in what sense do you claim to be Christian. These questions are not directed at you specifically; they have just been on my mind in view of other things I have read, primarily on this blog. Anyway, I enjoy reading all your posts.
Greetings from a fellow Gator fan, born and raised (and a degree from there as well).
About a year ago Dr. Ehrman let me post a (Platinum only) two-part series on the difference between a “Christian” and a “disciple.” In a nutshell, a “Christian” is one who believes Jesus is the Christ: the divine crucified and resurrected Son of God. A “disciple” is one who actually studies and strives to follow the teachings of Jesus. They aren’t necessarily the same thing, in my view. I know of a church that likes to refer to themselves as “disciples” because the term “Christian” is so vague and used by all kinds of people with widely divergent beliefs. But hey, I don’t hold a copyright on either term, so feel free to use them as you like. Go Gators!
” a “Christian” is one who believes Jesus is the Christ: the divine crucified and resurrected Son of God. A”
thanks for these definitions, I never understood Jesus the Christ as our Savior & Lord to which he wasn’t.
Especially what has occurred since 2016 [actually 2015] in the USA. & in general my whole life
Very nicely done, for some time now I’ve believed some of Jesus’s teachings only make sense in the context of the world ending very soon, as in some short number of months.
As for turning the other cheek, maybe Jesus taught that so Jews would focus on repentance rather than getting a black eye. I grew up in a very rough inner city neighborhood. There really is no substitute for punching a bully in the face when I was a kid.
I liked the rope explanation of the needle. The Franciscans at my school taught the eye of the needle was a term for gate of the city, which was low and shaped sort of like the eye of a needle. This forced camels to stoop down to get through, rather than charge through attacking. I don’t know that there were even camels in Jerusalem at this time!
Thanks for the feedback. Turning the other cheek or not is like most moral codes: not absolute, and depends on the situation. A measured response is always better than rash retaliation. As for the city gate story, I have also heard that one, but my understanding is that it is a creative way to explain the story, but not based in reality. It actually mutes what Jesus is saying, making it sound merely difficult, but Jesus goes on to use the word “impossible,” making his meaning clear.
Doug –
Very thoughtful post! I suggest, however, that while your solution to the problem of the world’s continued existence is a workable one, Jesus really meant what he said at the time he said it. His advice only became impractical hyperbole when the world refused to end on schedule. As such, your interpretation offers a practical – and reasonable – solution.
One area you didn’t address, though, is sex. Jesus saw no need for sex (or marriage) because there would shortly be no further need of procreation. (Paul was more practical on that score; he recognized that sex has other purposes.) This explains why the Catholic Church to this day prizes virginity, though it certainly has no problem acquiring possessions.
Best,
Dan
I agree, Jesus meant what he said, because the end of the age was at hand, but I think he was guided by a strong sense of right and wrong that has more universal application than just in an end-time scenario. As for sex, he said people would not be married in the kingdom, but would be like the angels, and in Genesis 6 angels appear to have sex (at least 1st Enoch interprets it that way), so who knows what Jesus really thought about sex in the kingdom of God. No marriage, just free love?
But in 1 Cor. Paul (not Jesus, admittedly) says we won’t have physical bodies, only spiritual ones. I agree that we can’t know what he actually thought about sex, but there is that passage in Matt. 19:12 where he praises eunuchs (probably to object to the rule that eunuchs couldn’t serve in the temple). Given that he also objects to adultery, and given that he was responding to a question about the woman with seven husbands (consecutively), I think the more reasonable reading is that there will be no sex in the kingdom. (The Nephilim are not considered a good role model.)
In any event, the early Church fathers read it that way, placing virginity as the highest virtue, and to this day many Christians are uncomfortable with sex for pleasure. So I would suggest you need to be, as it were, counter-hyperbolic on this one.
Are you suggesting that Dan Brown was wrong about Jesus and Mary Magdalene having a child together?! Seriously, I agree, in light of the coming end of the world Jesus seemed to dismiss sex and even marriage and family, because in the coming Kingdom that would all be superfluous. But then there’s the Secret Gospel of Mark and what it suggests…
Great insight.
Thank you!
I would suggest that “getting the timeline wrong” is a very serious error, and illustrates that Jesus was not a god with omniscience, but very much a product of his Jewish culture. And while he disagreed with Temple worship, he seemed very much to personally believe that the Son of Man would return within the life time of his adherents. This makes him distressingly human in the sense that he got it wrong just like anyone else. He was not the omniscient god-at-birth who foresaw all that would come in history. He instead seemed to have became influenced by the conspiracy theories (so to speak) of his times, just as Americans today base their lives on the latest pronouncements of QAnon. Getting the time line wrong is incredibly important! For me personally, this is a deal breaker in terms of seeing Jesus as I was taught in mainstream Roman Catholicism, where he never sinned and certainly never made a mistake!
Regarding slavery, the very idea of no slavery was simply unthinkable in ancient civilization. I doubt the idea even occurred to Jesus that this was wrong or would ever be eliminated. I am trying to find a modern equivalent, but it is hard. Perhaps it would be like a history scholar from a civilization 2000 years from now trying to understand how a moral man in the 21st century could defend the nuclear family (supposing a future civilization where children are seen as a society’s greatest value and are raised “by a village” instead of just 1 mating pair). Or on the material level, it would be akin to someone in our period arguing against the use of electricity!
The historical evidence seems to suggest Jesus being a man with the predictive skills of a man. This, of course, causes tremendous controversy when millions are still taught that he was god-from-birth with foreknowledge of all that would come. As a Roman Catholic, for example, I was taught that while on the Cross, Jesus could see each one of us from the beginning to the end of time! Ah, I think not.
And yet even the non-divine Abraham Lincoln knew how to apply the Golden Rule to the issue of slavery: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” One would think that the Son of God would have had and would have taught similar insight. Jesus’ solution to slavery was that God was soon to remove all such injustices. But he was wrong, and millions paid the price (there were an estimated 4 million slaves at the beginning of the Civil War, with the Bible often used as justification).
Thanks, I really enjoyed your post. I love the hyperbole you can find in the Bible, put really, push a camel through the needle’s eye. I like what C.S Lewis said about this:
“All things (e.g., a camel’s journey through a needles eye) are possible, it’s true. But picture how the camel feels, squeezed out in one long bloody thread, from tail to snout.
–C.S. Lewis
Maybe the eye of the needle refers to a black hole, the gateway to heaven…lol 😎🙏🏻
Of course, another solution is to make a really big needle! Some churches make the needle so big that the rich can now easily pass through, while others make it so small that their members spend their whole lives wondering if they’ll get through.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”: Christian morality, the Golden Rule, only works in bilateral relationships because there are no rules for who to identify with once a third person enters the equation. This explains, for example, why cases of child abuse have not been addressed within the Christian communities.
No, even in a group the thought should still be, “How would I want to be treated in this situation?” In the case of child abuse, if you would not want to be a child being abused by an adult, then you would recognize that as wrong and seek to intervene. I think the problem with church sex scandals is more a matter of denial (That can’t be happening in the church!) and the fact that a large organization tends to develop a life of its own and acts to protect itself. Some church leaders may think that the church, being the source of God’s gospel, is more important than some cases of child abuse, and therefore act to protect the reputation of the church, but in their shortsightedness they hurt the church, not to mention all the children hurt by their actions and inactions. You would think a church above all other institutions would have morality not expediency as its guiding principle, but alas…
My favourite teachings of Jesus are Matthew 6:2 – 6:6 where Jesus preaches against public masses and giving of alms; basically against the standard practices of any Christian community today:
“when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others … when you pray, go into your room, close the door”
“when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others … when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret”
Yes, Jesus’ teachings on prayer are among the most ignored! I think of this every time I hear legislators insist on opening sessions with a public prayer, or every high school football game has to begin with a prayer, and of course we must have public school teachers leading our students in prayer. As for giving to the needy, I’m glad churches do some of this however public or private it might be, but in my experience the amount given to the needy is a small fraction of what goes to the building and staff. But many individual Christians do give generously without fanfare.
I doubt that anything we read in the NT actually quotes Jesus or even represents whatever he taught his followers. What we have was written so much later. My suspicion is that the core idea that carried forward was that the end is nigh – and that later writers assumed Jesus must have taught according to that core idea and must have said things like “turn the other cheek” because it was important not to lose God’s favor due to the coming judgment. In other words, don’t risk offending God. If Jesus was such a great teacher, presumably, he would have been clearer about what he meant and it probably would have been easier to actually remember what he said. The later writers were not great teachers, and so, poor Jesus got a lot of cryptic and almost nonsensical teaching put into his mouth. I think Christian theology is such a confusion of ideas because no one has a clue what Jesus actually taught and as I mentioned, those who did get recorded barely knew what they were trying to convey and differed broadly from one another because they were making it up, imagining what Jesus said.
Thank you for your comments. I think the fact that Jesus’ teachings work well in the short term but are problematic in the long term is evidence that some of these teachings do go back to Jesus (“The end is at hand!”). They don’t fit so well with long-term existence (2000 years and counting). The Gospel writers probably thought they were even closer to the end of the age, so they didn’t see a problem, yet. Now we can see the holes or gaps created by such a short-term perspective. I think the problem with theology is not so much that we don’t know what Jesus said, but rather that the church quickly turned from the religion of Jesus (“love one another”) to a religion about Jesus (“Believe in Jesus and you will be saved!”).
Thank you for the reply and the perspective. These are discussions I wish more people would entertain.
Very interesting, insightful and clearly laid out. Your conclusions are well-reasoned and seem rather obvious when presented in this manner.
Thank you!
First, I really like your post. I think it makes a lot of sense and makes Jesus’s words easier to understand.
About camel vs rope, the Greek word for camel is of course κάμηλος. However, some manuscripts (though not many) have instead κάμιλος, which means a rope or ship’s cable. As you can see, the words are very similar; one has an eta and the other has an iota, so some confusion is understandable. Scholars generally discount the “rope” reading.
Thank you. I’m not sure why scholars dismiss the rope idea. Visually it makes more sense; pushing a camel through the eye of a needle makes no sense. And pushing a rope through the eye of a needle is still impossible, so the point he is trying to make stays intact.
The earliest manuscripts all have “camel.” The “rope” reading is not well attested; it occurs in a small number of minuscules no earlier than the ninth century. By the way, the two words κάμηλος and κάμιλος were pronounced the same way in New Testament times and later (although they have different pronunciations in the anachronistic system taught in seminaries today), perhaps making scribal error more likely. Finally, your own point about hyperbole is excellent and I think explains it well.
Douglas instead of trying to sugar coat teachings of disillusioned mind with schizophrenic ideas (Paul) whose imaginary thoughts got early followers to create teachings & attributed to Jesus. Or for those teachings that really stem from the Essenes or Ebionites movement (what Jesus taught).
It is better to acknowledge that most of teachings attributed to Jesus are impractical, primitive & doomed to fail. It creates a prison for those who embrace those teachings & make them suffer on daily basis.
Any teaching that is applied blindly without thought may seem impractical and/or doomed, but I think there are plenty of teachings of Jesus that have value. Compassion for the sick and needy, showing mercy instead of judgment, putting people above possessions, to name a few. Of course, as another commenter pointed out, such teachings are not specific to Jesus. I think the reason the essence of Jesus’ teachings may be found in other movements, whether Ebionite, Essene or even pagan philosophies, is that empathy leads us to certain observations about how best to live. So it’s hard to say A drew from B, or B drew from A, or A and B came up with similar ideas independently. And if another group has a good idea, why not incorporate that into your own philosophy and teach it? Nobody comes up with their own philosophy without influence from others.
Doug, thanx for the thoughtful piece. I continue to find it hard to keep this subject in context. Not just that it is 1st Century CE Palestine, but the depth of the apocalyptic belief the man had and apparently held onto till his death. It does, notwithstanding the supernatural basis it was built on, actually make the derivative beliefs discussed… somehow seem more reasonable. Rick
U of F ‘ 71
Thanks for the feedback. If you think the end of the world is at hand, what’s the use of possessions, seeking revenge, building a family, etc? But it’s important to remember that Jesus still taught his followers to care for others, not just throw up your hands and wait for God to fix things. I think that is overlooked by some. Go Gators!
Regarding love for one’s enemies: I always thought this rule makes more sense when you consider that most “enemies” are “tribal” rather than personal. It is remarkably easy for authority figures to direct followers to hate large numbers of people, and not just traditional pariah groups. We “hate” people based on religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. because we have been taught that people in certain classifications or “tribes” threaten the survival of our own group. In recent years, we’ve even seen some politicians turn public employees into objects of hatred (the politics of resentment). THEY are responsible for your financial woes and THEY don’t work as hard as you do. Political and/or religious differences tear once loving families apart, making them “hate” those they used to love and respect. Your “enemy” is usually not an individual who did something terrible to you or yours. The “enemy” is all too often just someone in the wrong “tribe” who never did anything to hurt you.
1. SUre, lots of examples. Ghandi for a start. 2. I don’t understand the problem. I think the same thing about what it means as when I wa a Christian. The followrs of JEsus have been martyred and they want blood vengeance, and God promises to give them. 3. Yes, people in the Jewish religion also had similar experiences when their sins were forgiven. 6. I’d say it’s odd to claim that non-believers in Jesus cannot be hypocrites since Jesus spends a good bit of time saying they are in, e.g., Matthew 23! As to condescension and hubris: speck in the eye/log in the eye!
But I’ll let Doug answer as well!
true my hypocrisy shining through. But like I said I have a high goal!!! my gong is ringing instead of love…
1. So you agree the teachings of Jesus are supremely affective when applied as he taught why so much effort in the post? the effort is understanding what jesus said. just ask Ghandi.
2. Jesus did not teach vengeance and its not in the NT. The martyrs in rev 6:10 don’t want it. 1 hint: where is there location?
3. of course! so far beyond the topic of slavery.
6. he was talking to jews…they have a standard
1. Ghandi wasn’t interpreting Jesus. You were asking who implemented that kind of teaching. 2. I’m afraid they beg for it. As you know, I”ve just written a book on the topic.
6. Judge not lest you be judged. Amazing how people who judge don’t think it applies to themselves…
1. Ghandi proves my point is what I meant.
You know the most amazing insight I got from you was Jesus cursed on a tree and how that splinter stuck in Paul’s brain and out of that poured an amazing theology. Why isn’t Rev 6:10 a splinter in your brain? Paul could have left Jesus cursed on that tree at face value but he didn’t —you leave the contradiction of vengeance in Rev 6:10 at face value. Totally against Jesus’ teachings. I suppose I need to get your book and see your view on this. Perhaps your thoughts are similar to D. H. Lawrence above. 1 hint: where are the martyrs located?
They are under teh altar. I would not say that the intended meaning of that is self-evident.
I don’t think I do leave it evident at face-value, but I’d be happy to know what you mean by that. I don’t believe you’ve read my discussion of it in my book?
Great. I’ll get the book. verrrrrry curious about your discussion on that point. D. H. Lawrence was definitely confused.
I don’t think too many Bible scholars accept the specifics of Lawrence’s assertions, but his general take on the tone and meaning of Revelation is worth considering.
Bart said the roman empire was converted by miracles… here is a great testimony of a radical Muslim infiltrating the american bible belt—-and getting converted.. just awesome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGxnG_e7beg
As I doctor I am cautious about accepting any experience that occurs within one’s own mind. Paul may have believed he saw the resurrected Jesus and so converted, but there is no way for anyone else to verify what he saw in his mind. Many ancients were “converted” by miracle stories because they thought that is how the world operated, and the god with the best miracles wins! An odd phenomenon is that miracles that support my worldview are valid, but those that support a different worldview are false! People reject most miracle stories as silly – unless they happen to occur within and support their own religious belief system. It’s a part of human nature that makes objectivity difficult.
Yes that’s the thing about miracles is they are 100% subjective. But I think people of the same religion are generally experience the same miracles. Muslim have Muslim miracles, Xns have Xn miracles, tribes have shaman miracles. If a PHD psyc candidate was interested they could devise an objective filter that could show the results of pre and post miracle subjects. There is a ton of study that be done on miracles the hard part is discovering what is objective about a subjective experience…perfect for Psrynks..