Which Jesus?
By Carl S --
Some people are expecting Jesus to actually return to earth. They’ve been told it so much that they truly are convinced it’s possible since, after all, they believe a dead person can come back to life. They haven’t really studied their gospels, and they accept St. Paul’s version of Jesus.
They ought to be careful what they wish for, lest it come true, as the saying goes. For one thing, he’d be pissed off that none of them has followed his commands to sell all they have and give the proceeds to the poor, to pluck out an eye or dismember themselves if those body parts led them to “sin.” And let us not forget that many of them have become the very hypocrites he ranted about and railed against. This is not to mention pedophile priests and major con artists taking from the very poor he praised. (Of course, if he knew so much, which he didn’t, he wouldn’t have set up the prime conditions for all the horrors and corruption his churches have committed.)
There is a god of the Orient who becomes mortal from time to time, in order to experience what it is to be human. (I’ve been told its name is Kwan Yin.) That god alternates between being a man and a woman. I make the point to Christians that their god has no experience of what it means to be a woman in feelings or thinking. Would a returning “Jesus” be a woman, perhaps a lesbian, or maybe a gay man (or has that already happened, with the apostle he loved), in order to personally know what it is to be in person, one of “them?”
The “image of Jesus”, as painted on the Shroud of Turin, has sold thousands, if not millions, of paintings based on it, and brought a lot of money into the church in which it is displayed. You might say it’s akin to proving that a real person version of Charlie Brown, the cartoon character, exists because there is a drawing of him. In movies and paintings, Jesus has been blue-eyed, and narrow-eyed in the Orient.
The thing about Jesus is that this “person” has become nothing more than a logo, a trademark, a Swiss army knife, all purpose, morphed idealism, divorced from the descriptions in the gospels. I am sure that many of us who have read those gospels carefully have come to the conclusion that if he did return as a woman, he’d be called a “bitch.” This is the side of Jesus the clergy avoid, and yet, the one they tell their sheep to expect. It’s so obvious, but the believers in a “personal relationship” fail to see their own blindness; like the mother who refuses to believe, who says, “My son could never have done that. I KNOW he’s innocent.”
According to those gospels, Jesus told his followers to “become as little children,” gullible, trusting, unquestioning, and thus opening the doors wide to pedophile priests who are given access by trusting, gullible, parents. (You might argue that he didn’t see that coming… while believing that he knows all things. Just try it.) And here is a man so mentally unstable and/or angry that he killed a fig tree because it didn’t produce fruit out-of-season, and expected seed to grow on rocks or hard ground! One could go on and on with examples like this. One could say, based on such examples, that he actually forced people to have him killed; the ol’ death-wish tempting.
Get real. No one takes that Jesus seriously except the psychologically ill. Everyone else latches on to St. Paul’s version of the loving, forgiving (hell is forgiving?), self-sacrificing savior, so similar to the savior-gods of oriental religions which were so popular in the Roman world at the time.
I can just picture a Christian reading this and saying, “Man, you’ve sure got the nerve, the chutzpah, to say these things about Jesus. May you rot in hell! What makes you an authority?” To which I calmly reply, “Where do you get off telling me I MUST believe your, the Pope’s, or St. Paul’s interpretation of Jesus? Who has the gall?” (Christians attend church services, and while doing so, often send their children for bible studies. One suspects that some of the things the kids are being taught, their parents may not believe themselves, and not just about Jesus.)
Believers will say that I have a lot of nerve, and that it’s blasphemy to offer my interpretation. But it is better than theirs since it is based on quotable texts. They will say it is illegitimate nonsense, since I have never met Jesus or witnessed him doing anything. Have they? Did their ‘saint”, Paul? As far as we know, he didn’t. And speaking of witnesses, here is a man who (it is claimed) brought people back from the dead, healed cripples, restored sight to the blind, and fed thousands, not once, but twice, with a few loaves of bread and some fishes, yet no contemporary historian in the whole Roman empire mentioned him! Give me a break. If Christians weren’t so willing to accept ignorance as bliss, they’d know this.
Some people are expecting Jesus to actually return to earth. They’ve been told it so much that they truly are convinced it’s possible since, after all, they believe a dead person can come back to life. They haven’t really studied their gospels, and they accept St. Paul’s version of Jesus.
There is a god of the Orient who becomes mortal from time to time, in order to experience what it is to be human. (I’ve been told its name is Kwan Yin.) That god alternates between being a man and a woman. I make the point to Christians that their god has no experience of what it means to be a woman in feelings or thinking. Would a returning “Jesus” be a woman, perhaps a lesbian, or maybe a gay man (or has that already happened, with the apostle he loved), in order to personally know what it is to be in person, one of “them?”
The “image of Jesus”, as painted on the Shroud of Turin, has sold thousands, if not millions, of paintings based on it, and brought a lot of money into the church in which it is displayed. You might say it’s akin to proving that a real person version of Charlie Brown, the cartoon character, exists because there is a drawing of him. In movies and paintings, Jesus has been blue-eyed, and narrow-eyed in the Orient.
The thing about Jesus is that this “person” has become nothing more than a logo, a trademark, a Swiss army knife, all purpose, morphed idealism, divorced from the descriptions in the gospels. I am sure that many of us who have read those gospels carefully have come to the conclusion that if he did return as a woman, he’d be called a “bitch.” This is the side of Jesus the clergy avoid, and yet, the one they tell their sheep to expect. It’s so obvious, but the believers in a “personal relationship” fail to see their own blindness; like the mother who refuses to believe, who says, “My son could never have done that. I KNOW he’s innocent.”
According to those gospels, Jesus told his followers to “become as little children,” gullible, trusting, unquestioning, and thus opening the doors wide to pedophile priests who are given access by trusting, gullible, parents. (You might argue that he didn’t see that coming… while believing that he knows all things. Just try it.) And here is a man so mentally unstable and/or angry that he killed a fig tree because it didn’t produce fruit out-of-season, and expected seed to grow on rocks or hard ground! One could go on and on with examples like this. One could say, based on such examples, that he actually forced people to have him killed; the ol’ death-wish tempting.
Get real. No one takes that Jesus seriously except the psychologically ill. Everyone else latches on to St. Paul’s version of the loving, forgiving (hell is forgiving?), self-sacrificing savior, so similar to the savior-gods of oriental religions which were so popular in the Roman world at the time.
I can just picture a Christian reading this and saying, “Man, you’ve sure got the nerve, the chutzpah, to say these things about Jesus. May you rot in hell! What makes you an authority?” To which I calmly reply, “Where do you get off telling me I MUST believe your, the Pope’s, or St. Paul’s interpretation of Jesus? Who has the gall?” (Christians attend church services, and while doing so, often send their children for bible studies. One suspects that some of the things the kids are being taught, their parents may not believe themselves, and not just about Jesus.)
Believers will say that I have a lot of nerve, and that it’s blasphemy to offer my interpretation. But it is better than theirs since it is based on quotable texts. They will say it is illegitimate nonsense, since I have never met Jesus or witnessed him doing anything. Have they? Did their ‘saint”, Paul? As far as we know, he didn’t. And speaking of witnesses, here is a man who (it is claimed) brought people back from the dead, healed cripples, restored sight to the blind, and fed thousands, not once, but twice, with a few loaves of bread and some fishes, yet no contemporary historian in the whole Roman empire mentioned him! Give me a break. If Christians weren’t so willing to accept ignorance as bliss, they’d know this.