The Jesus who challenges billionaires, who breaks ICE detention centers, who stands with transgender kids, who feeds the hungry—that Jesus is still too danger
Indeed Jesus was a revolutionary against the establishment of the day which included the Jewish establishment that cooperated with the Roman occupation, especially the Pharisees cast. His ‘render under Caesar’ was a revolutionary statement. The Romans insisted that the Jews accept Caesar as a god. Jesus' response distinguished between Caesar and God indicating Caesar was not a god.
Quite soon the organized church moved away from the essential teaching of Jesus, which you have correctly identified as compassion. They established its centre in Rome. Jesus had never entered Rome; Peter was the bishop of Antioch. But Rome was the centre of power. And power corrupts not only politicians but also religious figures as history has proven.
And at the same time the church replaced compassion with required belief in certain doctrines, many of which came from the Jewish Tanach (renamed the Old Testament to disguise its Jewish source), the conclusions of theologians and rarely from the teachings of Jesus.
A new concept, heresy, was born which allowed the church to torture and kill those who did not accept what it decided was theological truth. And that substituted cruelty for the teachings of compassion, especially the love your enemy based teachings of Jesus. Where did Jesus say you had to believe anything to get into heaven?
It Is a failure of most of the Christian clerics today that they don’t emphasize what you have pointed out. That Jesus told the rich man who wanted to follow him to give away all his possessions to the poor. And that it was more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle (a dangerous mountain pass). And yet the clerics remain silent as one this very type that Jesus warned about is autographing bibles and others are worshipped as attending the pinnacle of success in our society.
How refreshing! I get so weary of the ignorance and pretension of "believers". The truth is within you, but finding it is buried under tons of rubble. It is simple but buried under excuses. What people see from the outside is rubbish. Free your light; let it shine, as it is.
I thank you deeply for articulating and referencing some of the critical teachings of Jesus, often lost in many "Christian" churches, preachers and parishioners. Anyone can call themselves a "Christian" and who am I to agree or disagree. But my own personal "Christian" experience and journey leads me to believe that the only "true" Christians are those who try follow, however imperfecly, the teachings of Jesus.....full stop. And I know many who lead very "Christian" lives who practice other religions and those who follow no formal religion but 'follow' Jesus' teachings. It really comes down to how you treat other humans and all organisms we share the planet with, what priority one places on the material possessions and what kind of world we leave our children and all generations to follow.
Sounds good to me. I certainly hope the Jesus you describe was the real one. What we know of him I believe is from what others have said. Who knows if any of it is true...or if there actually was a Jesus. In any event I would so much love it if the Christians of today, especially the American ones were more Christ-like. Many of them would no doubt reject him if he appeared today.
Doublethink. To rewrite the past as if only the present defines the past. No reality but reality TV. What one says is reality, especially if it is sent out with demonic purpose disguised as peace and love, with words alone, never outcomes. There are millions of Max Headrooms out there right now, babbling nonsense like it was a waterfall of wisdom. If the christian texts have any meaning it is the outcome of 2k years of skepticism. Now science is NOT skepticism, it is questioning, and rebirth after rebirth of more and better information, more grokking of reality, not scripted, but raw and nasty and uncertain. But reality itself is not uncertain, just entropic, cast into some stone that must weather into oblivion to be forgotten after it has manipulated the fate of biiliions for centuries. Not a definition or outcome of chaos. Same old addictive gerbil wheel of agony and loss. Who needs this? Not any victims of human violence, and that would be virtutally everyone.
Indeed Jesus was a revolutionary against the establishment of the day which included the Jewish establishment that cooperated with the Roman occupation, especially the Pharisees cast. His ‘render under Caesar’ was a revolutionary statement. The Romans insisted that the Jews accept Caesar as a god. Jesus' response distinguished between Caesar and God indicating Caesar was not a god.
Quite soon the organized church moved away from the essential teaching of Jesus, which you have correctly identified as compassion. They established its centre in Rome. Jesus had never entered Rome; Peter was the bishop of Antioch. But Rome was the centre of power. And power corrupts not only politicians but also religious figures as history has proven.
And at the same time the church replaced compassion with required belief in certain doctrines, many of which came from the Jewish Tanach (renamed the Old Testament to disguise its Jewish source), the conclusions of theologians and rarely from the teachings of Jesus.
A new concept, heresy, was born which allowed the church to torture and kill those who did not accept what it decided was theological truth. And that substituted cruelty for the teachings of compassion, especially the love your enemy based teachings of Jesus. Where did Jesus say you had to believe anything to get into heaven?
It Is a failure of most of the Christian clerics today that they don’t emphasize what you have pointed out. That Jesus told the rich man who wanted to follow him to give away all his possessions to the poor. And that it was more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle (a dangerous mountain pass). And yet the clerics remain silent as one this very type that Jesus warned about is autographing bibles and others are worshipped as attending the pinnacle of success in our society.
How refreshing! I get so weary of the ignorance and pretension of "believers". The truth is within you, but finding it is buried under tons of rubble. It is simple but buried under excuses. What people see from the outside is rubbish. Free your light; let it shine, as it is.
I thank you deeply for articulating and referencing some of the critical teachings of Jesus, often lost in many "Christian" churches, preachers and parishioners. Anyone can call themselves a "Christian" and who am I to agree or disagree. But my own personal "Christian" experience and journey leads me to believe that the only "true" Christians are those who try follow, however imperfecly, the teachings of Jesus.....full stop. And I know many who lead very "Christian" lives who practice other religions and those who follow no formal religion but 'follow' Jesus' teachings. It really comes down to how you treat other humans and all organisms we share the planet with, what priority one places on the material possessions and what kind of world we leave our children and all generations to follow.
Sounds good to me. I certainly hope the Jesus you describe was the real one. What we know of him I believe is from what others have said. Who knows if any of it is true...or if there actually was a Jesus. In any event I would so much love it if the Christians of today, especially the American ones were more Christ-like. Many of them would no doubt reject him if he appeared today.
Doublethink. To rewrite the past as if only the present defines the past. No reality but reality TV. What one says is reality, especially if it is sent out with demonic purpose disguised as peace and love, with words alone, never outcomes. There are millions of Max Headrooms out there right now, babbling nonsense like it was a waterfall of wisdom. If the christian texts have any meaning it is the outcome of 2k years of skepticism. Now science is NOT skepticism, it is questioning, and rebirth after rebirth of more and better information, more grokking of reality, not scripted, but raw and nasty and uncertain. But reality itself is not uncertain, just entropic, cast into some stone that must weather into oblivion to be forgotten after it has manipulated the fate of biiliions for centuries. Not a definition or outcome of chaos. Same old addictive gerbil wheel of agony and loss. Who needs this? Not any victims of human violence, and that would be virtutally everyone.