Truth
Jesus or Christians, Who is Right? 3
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, October 04, 1999
Monday, 12 September 2005
A Poor Role Model
38. Christians look upon the Nazarene as the perfect example of what a man should be. In their opinion, if everyone would act as Jesus did all would be well. Even Christians who reject Jesus’s divinity think he was a great man. Was he such a great role model?
The cursing of the fig tree is the act in Jesus’s life which was for the theologians most out of character for Jesus. Jesus came to the fig tree which was out of season and therefore not in fruit:
Now in the morning, as he returned into the city, and when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.Mt 21:18-19
Why did the “Prince of Peace” take such a hard line against an innocent fig tree merely doing what Nature intended? In fact the incident was not real but a distorted parable in which the fig tree stood for the Roman Empire. But no Christian will believe that because it is not so represented in the good book.
39. Jesus is harsh to the brother who does not confess to the church of a wrong he has done:
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee… tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican.Mt 18:15-17
When Jesus says treat him like a gentile or a publican he means shun him—gentiles and publicans were shunned by pious Jews—proving that Jesus was not the friend of publicans and gentiles that the church likes to pretend.
40. Jesus warned against using strong language in strong terms when he said a man who called someone a fool was in danger of hell fire. Christians frequently use strong language, hell fire or no hell fire, especially as their master did:
O generation of vipers! how can ye, being evil, speak good things?Mt 12:34
Woe unto you, hypocrites, for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him two-fold more the child of hell than yourselves.Mt 23:15
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?Mt 23:33
If I should say I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you.Jn 8:55
All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers.Jn 10:8
Presumably Jesus was confident that, since he was God, he was in no danger of hell fire himself, but should ordinary Christians assume they can disobey God’s rules just as they like, merely because a son of God did?
Nowadays when people swear vulgarly every third word, it seems quite mild but Jesus, the son of God, had told people not to do it on pain of hell fire. Do Christians realize this?
41. In Matthew 8:28-34, Jesus cure a man of being possessed by 2000 demons, a creditable act of large dimensions even by the miraculous standards of the bible. The demons are not happy just to be sent away, so Jesus sends them into 2000 pigs which jump over a cliff into a lake and drown. It all adds local colour for a Christian but for a Naturalist it is grossly inconsiderate of another species and of the living of the poor peasant or peasants depending upon the pigs for their income. They were domestic pigs not wild ones because the gospel tells us. Why did a kind god ignore these facets of his wonders? Is he really good?
In John 2:15, we get that evangelists account of the cleansing of the Temple:
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables.
Christians consider this one of the noblest acts of Jesus’s career. For them he is protecting the house of God. It is not a house that they have any concern for themselves because it is Jewish not Christian, but they believe it shows great nobility and loyalty to his Father on the part of Jesus. In fact, of course, he was breaking the law, and that is why he was crucified. It might seem harsh to us but it was the law of the Romans, and Jesus lived in a Roman colony. Christians insist that Jesus was a divine innocent yet admire him for the act of vandalism which led to his crucifixion. And can anyone believe that this gentle quiet pacifist with only a few pieces of string as a weapon could have stopped a whole market place from operating? John invents the absurd whip to emphasize the lack of violence but it has the opposite effect of drawing attention to its absurdity.
Either the destruction of the pigs or the destruction of the traders stands in the Temple would have been sufficient today to get Jesus arrested. They were just as criminal then—more so—the punishment of one of them was crucifixion.
42. It is plain to anyone with brain cells in their head that the person called Jesus in John was different from the person with the same name in Matthew, Mark and Luke. One of the clearest ways of seeing this is in the estimation that Jesus had of himself. In the earlier gospels he is modest but in the fourth gospel he is an egomaniac. In the earlier gospels Jesus rarely uses the personal pronoun “I”. In the last gospel he cannot say a sentence without saying “I”, or “me”:
I am the light of the world.Jn 8:12
If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.Jn 8:24
I am the Son of God.Jn 10:36
I am the resurrection and the life.Jn 11:25
Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.Jn 11:26
If Jesus were really God the creator, he must know that people are rightly suspicious of braggarts and that is how the Jesus of John’s gospel sounds. Why didn’t Jesus brag as much in the earlier gospels? He hardly brags at all in Mark. The fact is that John was written almost a century after Jesus died and the man the author describes satisfies the image of a god of the early second century.
43. Jesus could be insufferably rude. Even as a boy, he inconsiderately left his parents (one of whom was Joseph, not God Almighty) and they had to go out of their way to find him, sick with worry. Was he sorry and apologised to his parents for his lack of concern? Not likely! This messiah has the arrogance of a god, not the manners of a gentleman:
And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?Lk 2:48
In pre-Benjamin Spock days most parents would have belted him across the ear for such rudeness. But Jesus evidently was not well brought up. The gospels do not show Jesus showing his mother much respect. He hardly spoke to her without being ill-mannered:
And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?Jn 2:4
In Matthew, Jesus denies his mother and his brothers:
But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?Mt 12:34
On one occasion, Jesus insulted his dinner host:
A certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools…Lk 11:37-40
Jesus failed to follow Jewish convention, particularly offending his Pharisaic host, by not washing. He then defended his uncleanliness and ungraciously abused his host. Jesus did not have to accept the invitation if he did not like Pharisees. Pharisees did not like Jesus either but this one seemed to be trying to be friendly. However, the story is a Lukan invention.
Jesus wanted his followers to have clean hearts rather than in clean hands, believing that to eat with unwashed hands defileth not a man. As a result Christianity has produced the filthiest specimens of humanity that ever offended the senses of man. Dirt, and not cleanliness, was deemed next to godliness by the saints of old. The filthier a human being became, the holier he grew. It was regarded in the middle ages, when everything was sacrificed to religion, as almost a sin to keep clean. It was waste of time to care for the body. It was taught that it was holier to worship than to wash. These dirty old saints were nasty for Christ’s sake. They went unclean because Jesus had encouraged nastiness. Dirty Christians still abide, but because science has prevailed over superstition, the reign of dirt has been moderated. Clean infidelity is preferable, even to Christians, to nasty piety. Rags might adorn a saint today, but not dirt.
Jesus calls a Syrophoenician woman’s daughter a dog when the woman asked him to help her daughter:
Jesus saith unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.Mk 7:25-29
His best friend, Peter, tried to persuade Jesus that his plan to go to Jerusalem into danger was wrong but Jesus turned on him and said:
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me.Mt 16:23
All of these show Jesus in a bad light—bad-tempered, bad mannered and churlish. Is this the role model parents want for their children?
44. Jesus ended the parable of the unjust steward, who had cheated his employer, with the following astonishing advice:
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fall, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.Lk 16:1-9
Christians struggle to explain this advice which seems counter to everything that Jesus normally taught. Attempts are always made to read into it what is not there but, as it stands, it plainly advocates opportunism rather than morality. If Luke or an editor of the gospel got it wrong, Christians must blame the error on the Holy Ghost who is again found wanting. If this is historical, Jesus is advising his somewhat unworldly followers, whom he calls the “Children of Light”, an Essene expression, to be more shrewd, like the crook, not to be more dishonest, though Luke plainly did not understand it either and put in his silly interpretation.
45. Liberal Christians who are ready to abandon almost all of the outrageous and supernatural passages of the bible, retain their faith by falling back upon the ethical system of Jesus as a wise man. The essence of this system of personal morals is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1 to 7:29. Even then not many of its admirers would think it proper to abide by all the teachings in it. Do Christians actually believe:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Christians will argue about what it means but, on the face of it, it means it is blessed to be depressed. No one could accept that as good advice, least of all depressive people. The only other meaning would be that it is blessed to have the spirit of poorness. This is probably the correct interpretation of an obscure sentence and it agrees with the teachings of Jesus elsewhere, but they are the teachings that no one in a capitalist country could accept. It is also an Essene expression.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
There is much to commend meekness, no doubt, but few people would regard it as a blessing and if they do, they do not live by it. There is scarcely a film made nowadays that does not do the opposite of this beatitude—they glorify aggression, conquest and thuggery. Do Christians refuse to watch them because they violate one of the expressed principles of their god?
When Jesus told the multitude, in Matthew 5:29ff and 18:8-9, to dismember themselves by cutting off the offending parts of the body rather than think lustily about a woman, did he mean it to be so? In this permissive age does any Christian consider cutting off any bits of his body rather than seducing his neighbour’s wife. In a former age, some Christians thought they should do as Jesus recommended. Origen, the early Christian apologist, castrated himself for his natural desires. If anyone did that today, there is not a Christian in the world who would not consider him mad and condemn it, but Origen, a leading Christian apologist of his time, actually did it. Was Origen mad to do what Jesus, his god, told him to do? Or are Christians today right to ignore their god’s mistaken advice? If so, why is he a god?
It seems that God made us all sexual animals just to torture us—a good god?
Probably a third of all Christians today will divorce and remarry without feeling it necessary to repudiate their religion, as a Catholic priest would have to, simply to marry. Yet Jesus was adamant that:
Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Those who permit remarriage after divorce should admit Jesus was wrong.
Jesus told people to turn the other cheek when they had been wronged. It was meant to be a metaphor for:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.
Christians will say that Jesus was only advising passivity when provoked, but that is not what he says. He says: “Do not resist evil”. He does not qualify the statement. At the least Jesus was being imprecise and therefore not perfect. Even if Jesus meant only that people should not fight, do Christians today accept it? Should Christians not defend themselves, become soldiers or join the police. Plainly they do. Jesus must have been wrong or modern Christians are not Christian.
Jesus can have had no regard for civil law for he advises that instead of defending a case, it should be immmediately conceded and additional compensation given:
If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
Since Jesus believed in poverty, this advice is consistent, but no Christian follows it today, and so Christians must think that Jesus was wrong.
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Yehouah was supposed to have been Jesus’s father in heaven, and Jesus had read the scriptures. How then was Yehouah perfect when he was, as Thomas Jefferson put it, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.
The Lord’s Prayer is a vain petition, which must be unnecessary if God is really omnipotent and full of lovingkindness. If the Lord’s Prayer is unnecessary then Jesus was telling people to offer up a pointless prayer.
Take no thought for the morrow.
Jesus thought that the morrow would be in the eternal life of God’s kingdom. His advice is consistent with that view. The kingdom of God however is still not here. Jesus was mistaken. Is there a Christian alive who takes no thought for the morrow. Those who do are ignoring their god and therefore agreeing that he was wrong. Any Christian who has a pension ought to get rid of it, if they want to show they believe Jesus was perfect.
For Christians to plead that mankind is imperfect despite their god’s instructions itself ignores the instruction to be perfect like God in heaven. There is no escape clause which allows the Christian not to bother trying to be perfect because it is too hard. That Christians make this an excuse proves that they do not believe Jesus was asking anything reasonable of them. He was therefore wrong.
The Golden Rule is thought the epitome of Jesus’s teaching, though Jesus himself acknowledged that he had it from the scriptures:
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them… for this is the law and the prophets.Mt 7:12
Jesus taught the Golden Rule in this positive way “…do … do…” but this form offers the chance to do to others what they do not like and that cannot have been the intention. A masochist likes to be tortured by others, so should he torture people? The rule offered by Confucius and the Jewish sages was in the negative form:
What you do not like when done to yourself, do not to others.
People consider it inferior to the positive form presumably because it allows indifference more easily. The negative form might logically be no better than the positive form but it is not so easy to justify your actions through double negatives than it is through a single one. The best rule is the rule of kindness:
Do unto others what best pleases them.
46. Only Christians can find sense or justice in the betrayal of Jesus by Judas and the curse placed on him:
The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.Mt 26:24
Jesus who was also God, Christians believe, had to be betrayed. Jesus could have given himself up as a sacrifice voluntarily, but instead God planned a betrayal—it was God’s plan, after all. Why then was the betrayer, who was only playing a role in the plan, condemned?
47. Jesus said:
Be not afraid of them that kill the body.Lk 12:4
But, when threatened with bodily injury himself, he was afraid:
Then took they up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid himself.Jn 8:59
Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him. But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence.Mt 12:14-15
He also prayed in Gethsemane to be relieved of his burden, scarcely accepting his own advice not to be afraid of facing his executioners:
Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour.Lk 22:42; Jn 12:23-27
Furthermore, if it was his and his Father’s plan that he should die, what did he expect to be the result of his prayer? Elsewhere Jesus says that prayers are answered, people only had to ask. Jesus realized his own mistake in trusting in God when, on the cross, he cries:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?Mk 15:34
Not only does this prove prayer does not work, it proves that Jesus could not have been God and that God is not perfect as Jesus believed, else he would have had compassion.
