Jesus was not a nice man

[sarahmichigan]

I'm sorry, but Jesus was not a nice guy. He was a fucker. I know a lot of New Agers want to believe that all the awful teachings in the Bible are confined to the Old Testament or to the teachings of Paul. But according to the New Testament, Jesus wasn't all love and light, and he even contradicted himself a bit.

-He said he came to bring a sword, not peace.
-He advocated disowning your family once you became a follower.
-He suggested cutting off body parts to keep yourself from sinning.
-He said that looking at another person with lust was as bad as committing adultery (Thought Police extraordinaire!).

So, if you are a "Cafeterian" and like to uphold the nice teachings in the Bible and ignore the not-so-nice ones, fine. Just don't try to tell me what a loving, peaceful teacher Jesus was.

What do you really know about what the Bible says?

http://www.ffrf.org/quiz/bquiz.php

Comments

[blergeatkitty.livejournal.com]

I think it bears pointing out that the Bible has been translated and re-translated so many times that taking anything in it completely literally (or taking it out of cultural context) is incredibly foolish.

Jesus also speaks allegorically quite a lot, as far as most modern theologians point out.

I think that making the blanket statement "Jesus was a dick" is just as shortsighted as any Christian trying to insinuate that you're a godless heathen who's going to hell.

I don't think any of us know the right answers to any religious quandaries, if you want to know the truth.

[aedifica]

ooh, I wanna take that quiz! But I don't quiz at work, so I'll just have to try to remember to do it later.

(You know I'm a Religious Studies major, right?)

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

Some of the ffrf's answers are biased, either willfully or out of their own ignorance. The most blatant of the part of the quiz I took was the Exodus reference to killing witches. Exodus was deliberately mistranslated by King James; the original was closer to "soothsayer" or "dream interpreter" -- which is ironic in itself, since Joseph of the Technicolor Dreamcoat was a dream interpreter, and was much loved by God.

Christianity's appeal, IMO, is in its contradictions: Since anyone can justify their beliefs (be they puritan or hedonist, judgmental or all-loving, misogynist or egalitarian) with the correct combination of verses, it's a one-size-fits-all/none religion. If you follow every single verse literally, the contradictions are undeniable.

[cabell.livejournal.com]

Pretty much all mainstream historians recognize the real existence of Jesus the man; whether you believe he was the divine son of Jehovah is, of course, quite another matter. I'd recommend taking a look at the Jesus Seminar's Five Gospels, however, before according equal credibility to all statements attributed to Jesus the historical religious reformer/leader/nut (as you prefer). They're a group of Biblical scholars (certainly NOT fundamentalists), and they have a very nice system of color-coding utterances attributed to Jesus according to whether it was almost certainly something he said, something he probably said something like, probably not something he said, or definitely not anything he ever said (see: entire Gospel of John).

The book also includes the Gospel of Thomas, which is Gnostic in character and certainly a different perspective on early Christianity and its portrayals of Jesus. It features Jesus bringing clay birds to life and striking some guy dead for bumping into him on the street, which rather overshadows your canonical examples of violent Christ behavior. :p

I was not raised Christian and, in fact, grew up in Rush Limbaugh's home town, where not being Christian was heavily sanctioned by my peer group; ironically, this aroused in me an interest in the history and philosophy of Christianity. Personally, I'm pretty okay with Jesus; having met my share of crazy pagans, I feel that there is pretty much no doctrine/teaching/whathaveyou that a determined idiot cannot twist to suit their own desires.