Who Was Jesus and what it means to Believe.

by objectivetruth 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  objectivetruth

  "Truth is one, paths are many." - Gandhi

  Gandhi also said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” What is it about Jesus, that so Gandhi liked, but so many JW's & Christians miss? Often when a believer mentions Jesus, a theological debate follows. Arguments include... "Jesus is God no Jesus is God's Son no Jesus is a myth" This is just a minor fraction of the Topics surrounding Jesus that create disputes and in turn divide People.

  Why can't people Concern themselves with His Message & Example first? Why must so much time be spent on Doctrine and Beliefs surrounding Incomplete knowledge? The Solution and the Problem is found in John 3:16 "“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

  The Problem - People read John 3:16 , and focus on the concept of Believing. They reason, if I believe in Jesus I will gain everlasting life.. Simple Enough, right? One definition of Belief is "confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof" Based on this definition, if we Maintain the mental confidence that Jesus existed and exists, we are saved.

  The Solution - God Loves us, and he gave his Son to walk the earth. If all that is required from us is to Believe that Jesus exists, then why was it necessary for him to Live on Earth? The word for "believe" in John 3:16 is the Greek Word - pisteuōn. Jesus uses this same Greek word at John 14:12 "whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do"... Here Jesus includes imitating his works with Believing in him.

  This word was also used at Acts 24:14 where Paul says "believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets," - Paul here is Defending himself in front of a Roman Court, some one has falsely accused him of teaching contrary to The Mosaic Law.. Paul's response to The Romans was that he Believes everything written down in the Law. If you think about the English definition of Belief, in regards to a matter existing, the Romans too would have Believed in the Existence of the Law written in the Scriptures.. Anyone who had ever seen the Bible would Believe in the existence is its writings. Clearly by Paul asserting that he Believes in the Law, he must have meant something more significant.

  The root word of The Greek word pisteuōn is peíthō.. One meaning of peíthō is "obey" (to persuade unto move or induce one by persuasion to do something). Acts 24:4 makes more sense with the word Obey than it does with believe.. Paul was stating that he Obeyed the Mosaic Law. Imagine John 3:16 read this way "whoever obeys him should not perish but have eternal life.".. What would it take to "Obey" Jesus? The Two most Important commands are :

  1. "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
  2. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

  Really the second command comes first, because it is impossible to Obey #1 without obeying #2 - "If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." (1 John 4:20 )

  We must first Love our neighbors and fellow humans, before it is possible to love God. Once we do this God will show us how to love him.. (1 John 4:12 ) Jesus was called "The Way - The Truth - The Life" .. This could be restated as "Jesus by his Example gave us the Truest way to Live, and through this example he shows us the Way to Gain life" - By imitating Jesus, we Gain Life.. Simple. How do we imitate him though?

  1. Matthew 5:39 "Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."
  2. Luke 6:30 "Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back."
  3. Matthew 7:1 "Do not judge others, and you will not be judged."
  4. Matthew 5:16 "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
  5. Matthew 7:12 " Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you."

  Jesus lesson and Example was Love,Humility,ForgiveNess,Self Sacrifice. If we believe in Him we will do all that we can to become all of these things. 1 Corinthians 11:1 " Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ."
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  crazyhorse

  Thank you for this analysis. I love it. Its so liberating to live your life as Jesus did.
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  Crazyguy

  MATT chapter 5 goes well with what your saying, in it jesus says if you can love your enemy then your perfect like god. Nice post..
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  nicolaou

  Jesus was a liar. He promised much and delivered nothing. I'm posting on the way to work right now but I promise to come back to this thread tonight and back my comments up.
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  designs

  Objectivetruth- don't you find Jesus just a tab hypocritical in Matthew 7:1.
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  punkofnice

  Obj - Jesus lesson and Example was Love, Humility, ForgiveNess, Self Sacrifice.

  I am not sure if Jesus actually existed or was just a philosopher of his time but I do go along with the above.

  There's no harm in being a good person as long as people don't take the mick.
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  EdenOne

  The problem, objectivetruth, is that what the gospels supposedly portray Jesus saying can hardly be confirmed. These gospels were:

  a) Written much time after the facts; the earliest, Mark, nearly four decades after Jesus' death - at least.

  b) None of them were written by eye-witnesses, none of them even by palestinian jews;

  c) They are - at best - fourth-hand accounts (and I'm being VERY generous conceding this, because it was certainly much more);

  d) They were written with a political agenda in mind and an axe to grind: blame the jews, make the romans look good, so that Christianism is more pallatable to the Hellenistic-Roman world;

  e) They were witten to suit the apostle Paul's interpretation of whatever he imagined the Christ to be. It was Paul's own visionary gospel, not the gospel of the twelve eye-witness apostles of Jesus. " I did not receive it [the gospel] from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." (Galatians 1:12)

  f) They reveal a great degree of contradictions when you start looking at the fine details, many of those are impossible to reconcile. And, even when you attempt to reconcile some of the discrepancies, you're in fact constructing a fifth gospel.

  g) The real historical Jesus was part of a jewish messianic apocalyptical movement that stood against many things that the very gospels attempt to portray about him, and definetively very opposed to the version of the Christ that Paul concocted resorting to jewish mysticism and greek neoplatonism.

  h) The 'Jesus movement' failed first when John the Baptist and then Jesus himself were killed by the Jewish establishment in alliance with the Herodian-Roman establishment; after this, the momevent alleged that Jesus had resurrected to heaven, and would return soon; now led by the apostle James, then his brother Simon, this renewed movement utterly failed in getting their expectations right about the imminent establishment of God's Kingdom led by the "Son of Man" that would overthrow the foreign Roman-Herodian domination of Palestine and purify the temple, and restore a Davidian kingship and an Aaronic-Phinean-Zadockean priesthood in Jerusalem's temple. Likewise, Paul's expectations proved unfounded also.

  i) In an attempt to explain away the utter embarassment of why God's Kingdom didn't come as expected (2 Peter 3:3,4) but rather, Israel's earthly temple was destroyed and Jerusalem transformed into an heathen metropolis and the Jews scattered into a diaspora, the Christian movement, especially that of Pauline persuasion aimed at the gentiles, started to resort to supernatural idealizations about the nature of Jesus, the Christ, and his "not-of-this-world, heavenly" Kingdom. In turn, in later periods of time, re-interpretations of Jesus' alleged utterances generated new apocalyptical expectations of a "return" of Jesus in his kingship power, the latest of which are the Millerite, and their heirs, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses. But there have been many others during the last 1900 years.

  j) It was in THIS context that the four bible gospels were produced, each one with its own flavor, but all agreeing with the Pauline vision. In this process, the real, historical Jesus was reshaped, morphed, changed, in fact, FORGED, into something that he never meant to be.

  Once you realize this process, what is left from Christianity to take away? Inspirational quotes? Wisdom? I agree that there is wisdom and inspiration to be drawn from the gospels, but nowadays I struggle to see what's the point of devoting your life to follow a myth.

  I was once like you, believing that the Bible was the inspired Word of God, and essentially error-free; that whatever was written there, give or take a glitch or two, was the truth of the matter, for God would surely ensure that it would get to our hands essentially intact. However, I thought that BEFORE I made any serious research about history and how the Bible canon came to be, and how these texts were written, by whom and why. At the end of the day, the Bible is a very human anthology of texts. God had NOTHING to to with the production of these texts, and certainly even less to do with their preservation and transmission. If anything, the writers had Gor in mind when they wrote them, and if that's enough to call it "inspiration", then fine. But that's not the kind of "inspiration" that I find worthy change my life for. If I change my life and devote it to someone, it better be God himself or His son. But unfortunately, that's NOT what you find when you put the Bible through a stress test.

  Do yourself a favor and make some serious, unbiased research. See where that leads you.

  Eden
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  EdenOne

  By "unbiased research" I mean study the bible (or the NT) from a non-devotional point of view; study it from a historical, sociological, point of view. The results are shattering, but if you value the truth as an absolute ethical value - as I do - you owe yourself that endeavour. Follow the evidence, not your heart.

  Eden
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  Heaven

  According to Bart Ehrman, most Bible Scholars/Historians agree that Jesus of Nazareth did exist. He was a Jewish apocolyptic preacher who thought God was going to fix all the world's ailments in his lifetime. Hmm... sounds vaguely familiar.

  One of my lightbulb moments was when I realized that not only did Jesus write nothing down but the original Bible texts are no longer available for scrutiny. This is a perfect environment to write whatever the ancients wanted Jesus to be, do, and say.

  And the result was the birth of the Christian cult where, if you don't believe what they do, and get reborn as a Christian, you will be judged and punished.
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  Viviane

  Living by the 5 ways to imitate Jesus as outlined in the OP would be a very stupid way to live...