Nice to see you pop in Gumby.
Open Mind
Where did JesusGet this Idea From?
by gumby 34 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Terry
CS Lewis exclaimed that due to the statements recorded as purportedly being from his lips, Christ must have either have been:
- A liar;
- Insane; or
- Genuinely the Son of God.
Well, let's just look at this logically.
1.If Jesus taught incredibly wonderful moral teachings and was self-deluded; that doesn't make him a liar. It makes him mistaken about himself. It makes him a talented Rabbi with delusions.
2. If Jesus spoke with invisible persons and asked them to stop infesting people by sending them into a herd of swine; this might indicate mental instability. But, not necessarily does this demonstrate insanity, per se. If superstition about demons was commonplace it would not have been unusual to diagnose illnesses as demon-caused. If "troubled" people found Jesus' words or deeds "liberating" they may have felt instantaneous relief. But, insane?
3. There were a great many "sons of God" on the planet during and prior to Jesus. Augustus Caesar himself was certainly divine. Hercules was a son of Jupiter. The designation "son of God" does not necessarily require divinity beyond mere blessedness. In a plural-god society replete with superstitious appeal to omens and soothsayers one might easily interpret Jesus' words and actions to a divine source.
Joseph Smith may have believed his "visions" and was, therefore, not a liar.
Joseph Smith may have had some brain lesions and merely acted logically toward any manifestations he "witnessed". This would not have made him insane.
Joseph Smith could reasonably be identified as a Prophet and many do so.
However, applying Occam's Razor to all the above the liklihood takes us in a more ordinary direction.
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bluebell
it is a pity that the watchtower prefers the god of hate in the old testament as opposed to the god of love in the new. my view is that they seem to be going on about two different beings!
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Narkissos
Mary,
Do you think Jesus was talking about 'loving your enemies' as referring to someone's personal enemies (as mentioned in Proverbs), or enemies of the Faith? As liberal as He was, I can't see that he was endorsing the ideas that his followers should love, say, the Pharisees.
Excellent question...
I can only answer it from my own perspective, which (provisionally) includes the following: we have no access to any "historical Jesus" upstream of the diverse 'Jesuses' portrayed in the early Christian texts.
From this perspective, I'll stick to the Matthean Jesus which I find already contradictory enough.
On the one hand, it is clear that the enemies which Christians are commanded to "love" are also, perhaps primarily, the "enemies of the Faith" (and only secondarily, perhaps a fortiori, personal enemies"). The direct answer to "what you have heard it has been said" is: "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." The enemies are described as persecutors (i.e., of the Matthean kind of "Christians" because they are such) and absolutely "evil" and "unrighteous".
On the other hand, Jesus' attitude to "Pharisees" as described in Matthew hardly suits the Sermon on the Mount. He judges them, condemn them, curses them, call them "fools" (23:17; compare 5:22)...
A similar (although symmetrical) discrepancy can be perceived between how the Matthean Jesus deals with Gentiles and tax collectors (9:10ff; 11:19; 21:31f) and his offering them as a model of relative "shunning" (18:17).
This I think shows that the Matthean portrait of the person and teaching of Jesus is a complex patchwork of very different ideas and ideals.
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Terry
in the sense of hating the actions of gods enemies moreso than hating the individual
So, by this rationale we should love the shark and hate the teeth?
We should love the gun and hate the bullets?
We should love the pedophile and hate the molesting?
Love the drunk driver who kills the family of four, but, hate the drunkeness?
Toward what purpose would we draw such an arbitrary line between person and volition?
What does it mean to have identity as a person if not to act according to one's choices? And if not "choices", then, compulsions or madness or obsessions?
Pull the stinger out of a wasp and you eviscerate it. Pull the behavior out of a person of evil deeds and you throw out the acts of will which stem from their beingness.
By the above "reasoning" there are only lovely innocent people populating the globe who are infested from time to time with causeless behaviors which result in horror, bloodshed, destruction and sadism.
Come on people! Think a little deeper about this why don't you?
This is like trying to "cure" a homosexual by denying their identity as a person and isolating their personhood from their behavior. We do what we do because of who and what we are.
I'd love to see what sort of arguments are offered by way of rebuttal!