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Jesus and love for enemies!

Thermal said:
Well, when you are the Universal Creator, you can be a little cocky.

Still, telling your peeps to "stay in ya lane, cause ya asses are mine" seems unnecessary anti-omnibenevolent.
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Nothing like divine command theory to keep the all powerful going when they get up in the morning.
 
Calderaro said:
The fault is not with Jesus' doctrine, but with men who interpreted it wrongly! The fault is with man!
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The jerk should speak more clearly then.

That is, if he existed and if what was reported of what he said was actually what he said. Which I find impossible to believe.

Imagine the likelihood of reporters 20 to 100 years after you died being accurate. Especially when all of it was written in a language that you yourself didn't speak.
 
acbytesla said:
The jerk should speak more clearly then.

That is, if he existed and if what was reported of what he said was actually what he said. Which I find impossible to believe.

Imagine the likelihood of reporters 20 to 100 years after you died being accurate. Especially when all of it was written in a language that you yourself didn't speak.
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But isn't the language of "give me your money and do as I say" pretty timeless?
 
Thermal said:
But isn't the language of "give me your money and do as I say" pretty timeless?
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It is. But maybe he said, please don't pound that nail into me and said nothing about doing what he said or that you should put money into the collection plate.
 
acbytesla said:
It is. But maybe he said, please don't pound that nail into me and said nothing about doing what he said or that you should put money into the collection plate.
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I feel confident his last words on the cross were along the lines of "God damn but this hurts, what the ◊◊◊◊ is wrong with you guys?", but that doesn't look as hot carved in imitation granite in front of a megachurch.
 
@Calderaro, please show evidence of the existence of Jesus.

Then please show evidence that he said any of the things that have been attributed to him.

Then explain the inconsistencies in the things he has been claimed to have said.
 
acbytesla said:
I know that verses like this are used as justifications for all kinds of Christian atrocities including the genocide of 6 million Jews by the NAZIs.
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You can always find a verse in the bible that agrees with any POV that you wish to express. I suspect that those who would do so to justify atrocities are only giving lip service to being "Christian".
 
psionl0 said:
You can always find a verse in the bible that agrees with any POV that you wish to express. I suspect that those who would do so to justify atrocities are only giving lip service to being "Christian".
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I know. Therefore it is no better than yesterday's trash.

This is what you get with 66 books written by an unknown number of authors and then having some Individuals centuries later arguing that it is all the word of a God that will have you tortured for all eternity if you don't accept their claims.

As Voltaire is famous for saying,
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
 
acbytesla said:
I know. Therefore it is no better than yesterday's trash.
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Value is in the eye of the beholder. But quote mining the bible to prove that God is evil (which many here do) is little different to quote mining the bible to justify genocide or to make slaves out of your followers.
 
psionl0 said:
Value is in the eye of the beholder. But quote mining the bible to prove that God is evil (which many here do) is little different to quote mining the bible to justify genocide or to make slaves out of your followers.
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I agree. Isn't that shocking? You and I agreeing to something?
 
It's hardly quote mining to point out that a deity that slaughters a man's wife and children then compensates him with a new wife and new children is a sociopathic monster, to use one good example.

People are not replaceable objects that can be switched in and out.

Or a creator who deliberately makes a person say no to freeing the jews, then uses his saying no to kill the firstborn sons of a nation despite the fact god made him say no.
Or how about the delightful quote from Jesus in Matthew 10:37

Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me
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Which is absolutely insane.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
It's hardly quote mining to point out that a deity that slaughters a man's wife and children then compensates him with a new wife and new children is a sociopathic monster, to use one good example.

People are not replaceable objects that can be switched in and out.

Or a creator who deliberately makes a person say no to freeing the jews, then uses his saying no to kill the firstborn sons of a nation despite the fact god made him say no.
Or how about the delightful quote from Jesus in Matthew 10:37. "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

Which is absolutely insane.
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Amen!
 
It's in the gospel. Why do you say it didn't happen?

What about the quote I provided?
 
Calderaro said:
this didn't happen! it's an interpolation
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If that is an interpolation then so is everything you assert that Jesus said or did. You can't have it both ways.

"15: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;"
 
Calderaro said:
The fault is not with Jesus' doctrine, but with men who interpreted it wrongly! The fault is with man!
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The whole of the Abrahamic religions are interpretations. Of made up stories. They can be interpreted to say whatever a person wants to say. And justify whatever evil an "adherent" wishes to impose upon others.
 
bruto said:
If that is an interpolation then so is everything you assert that Jesus said or did. You can't have it both ways.
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Actually, yes, he can have it both ways. An interpolation is supposed to be a later addition. It can hardly be argued that everything Jesus is supposed to have said are later interpolations.
 

steenkh said:
Actually, yes, he can have it both ways. An interpolation is supposed to be a later addition. It can hardly be argued that everything Jesus is supposed to have said are later interpolations.
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You actually could argue everything in the New Testament was an interpolation. Everything in it was written decades later by unknown authors. And we don't have single original text. Only copies of copies.
 
acbytesla said:
You actually could argue everything in the New Testament was an interpolation. Everything in it was written decades later by unknown authors. And we don't have single original text. Only copies of copies.
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You could, but that argument is very weak.
 
steenkh said:
You could, but that argument is very weak.
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Ok, you could argue that anything in the New Testament was an interpolation. An interpolation means inserting something later. Given that everything in it was done later and we have no originals. How would you know what was actually original and what was inserted?
 
acbytesla said:
Ok, you could argue that anything in the New Testament was an interpolation. An interpolation means inserting something later. Given that everything in it was done later and we have no originals. How would you know what was actually original and what was inserted?
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Never mind.
 
steenkh said:
Actually, yes, he can have it both ways. An interpolation is supposed to be a later addition. It can hardly be argued that everything Jesus is supposed to have said are later interpolations.
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True, I suppose, if you then concede that the scritptures are so inaccurate that they can't really be considered scriptures. Which I'm willing to go along with, but then everything is an interpolation or an extrapolation or a guess or a paraphrase. Nobody who wrote them was taking notes at the time.
 
steenkh said:
Actually, yes, he can have it both ways. An interpolation is supposed to be a later addition. It can hardly be argued that everything Jesus is supposed to have said are later interpolations.
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That can very easily be argued. The fact is that there is no compelling evidence that the "Jesus" who is quoted so much in scripture actually existed ad all. And there is no evidence at all that any of the "quotes" existed before the unidentified authors of the screeds wrote them.
 
Steve said:
That can very easily be argued. The fact is that there is no compelling evidence that the "Jesus" who is quoted so much in scripture actually existed ad all.
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We know the Christain churches were alive and rolling when a lot of the New Testament was being written. I'm inclined to think that there was a religious leader running around to have gotten enough popularity to have them so well established. Some troll saying "dude! I'm going to make up a religion and have the Romans torture me" seems a bit of a stretch.
Steve said:
And there is no evidence at all that any of the "quotes" existed before the unidentified authors of the screeds wrote them.
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The telephone game is definitely at play, here.
 
Thermal said:
We know the Christain churches were alive and rolling when a lot of the New Testament was being written. I'm inclined to think that there was a religious leader running around to have gotten enough popularity to have them so well established. Some troll saying "dude! I'm going to make up a religion and have the Romans torture me" seems a bit of a stretch.

The telephone game is definitely at play, here.
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Long long ago I took a course on the time in which Jesus is purported to have lived, and the take I got (from a pretty serious philosopher and historian at the time, world renowned for his work on Gnosticism) was that there probably was a real Jesus, but there also were many others in the same line at the time. The age was one of great unrest and fear, and apocalyptic cults and leaders abounded. For this reason, though we can reasonably assume that there was a Jesus we cannot be sure how much of what he said or did was accurate, and how much conflated from similar cults and movements that shared many of the same ideas. But the basic upshot, as I dimly recall, was that there's more likelihood there was some sort of real Jesus than that there was not, even if the religion that resulted from his actions was embellished and fine tuned.
 
Unless the guy in the Bible is actually based on someone who preached that he was the son of God and was then crucified, I'm not having it. That's like the bare minimum.
 
Olmstead said:
Unless the guy in the Bible is actually based on someone who preached that he was the son of God and was then crucified, I'm not having it. That's like the bare minimum.
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Totally speculative, but: Jesus is said to have run around calling himself the Son of Man, and saying God was 'our' father, and that you could do miracles too. It's plausible that he was saying we were all the same, but the generational retelling made it sound like he was more special, ending up with him being semi-god himself.

Regarding crucifixion, yeah probably was. The Roman occupiers weren't likely hearing the disobedience thing.
 
bruto said:
If that is an interpolation then so is everything you assert that Jesus said or did. You can't have it both ways.

"15: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;"
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The scourge is only in the Gospel of John. The flipping tables is in the others, but not the scourge. John is acknowledged as being the latest of the four Gospels.
 
arthwollipot said:
The scourge is only in the Gospel of John. The flipping tables is in the others, but not the scourge. John is acknowledged as being the latest of the four Gospels.
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I'm aware of that. But if you say, as Calderero does, that it did not happen, you are acknowledging that the Bible is not the authoritative word of God, and opening any part of it to question. If you're going to accept cherry picking, then you can argue about the flavor of someone's cherries, but not about the act of picking them.
 
bruto said:
I'm aware of that. But if you say, as Calderero does, that it did not happen, you are acknowledging that the Bible is not the authoritative word of God, and opening any part of it to question. If you're going to accept cherry picking, then you can argue about the flavor of someone's cherries, but not about the act of picking them.
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There's also the interesting idea that the supernatural aspects of Jesus are inflated the later you go. There are fewer outright miraculous events in Mark, which is the earliest, and when asked if he's the son of God he says things like "you say I am". In John he's straight up saying "God's my dad". Also it is thought that the last post-crucifixion scenes in Mark are a later addition by a different author.

This was discussed years ago in a very good podcast, now sadly long defunct.
 
I always took it to mean that one should respond to aggression in a calm, friendly, manner rather than responding in kind. I was approximately 8 when I came up with that. It doesn't actually say that, but that was approximately what I got from it. It seemed to be a practical conclusion that I could already relate to WRT behavior.

But yeah. I've never considered this one confusing. It seems to be mostly about deescalation in modern parlance. It merely suggests that you should show respect and compassion even in the face of aggression. Or that's how it translates to behavior. Easier said than done, of course... and I haven't noticed that Christians are any better at it than anybody else.
 
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Do we all "love" ourselves? Or do we simply have personal survival traits built into our DNA?

I don't think I love myself that much, and never have, at least in the way that I might love someone else.

To "love" an enemy is against all natural survival instincts, however on a micro level it might have some benefits within small social groups when life itself isn't threatened. At a macro level, when the well being of nations are threatened existentially, along with their indigenous population, stereotyping of the declared enemy, often kicks in. Without stereotyping that usually goes hand in hand with dehumanising, it would be difficult to motivate a populace and army to save a nation in times of war. It surely is all based on Darwinism.

Can Putin "love" Zelensky, and vice versa?
 
psionl0 said:
Loving your enemies seems to be about more than just deescalation. It is supposed to be unconditional love that is independent of what your enemies do to you.
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Well, yes, if you take it as an absolute, and if you take it to an extreme, it's clearly dysfunctional. However, despite being quite Non-Christian, I still value it as a tool in the toolbox of human interaction. I suppose that I consider "love thy enemy" to be the internal attitude which enables the behavior of "turn the other cheek" to function as intended. I think it goes a bit beyond that, but that's a good estimation of it.

Pacifism 101

But in any case, if I were to select the very last verse I'd pick to denigrate Christianity, this would be it. It clearly doesn't work as an absolute, though. It also has a tendency to be extremely hard to do just at the moment you need it the most, particularly if you have a massive ego (and I do). It can be quite a powerful tool when used in the right context.

I suppose my take on it is more attitude adjustment than anything -- or a switch to a different mode of interaction. Probably has more to do with my own internal labelling than with the verse, itself. It's funny. I still explicitly remember the day I picked that phrase out of a sermon into... I guess some sort of a brainstorm. I don't think I even heard most of the sermon. I just picked the phrase out, considered it from several angles, and wove it into my own meaning. Pretty sure it was around age 8 or 9.

...which is why I realize that my take on it may be somewhat unique to me.

But I've also seen other takes on how it can happen in fantasy novels and whatnot. The usual fare would have your protagonist killing the enemy only because it's necessary for some sort of save-the-world outcome, rather than out of hate... while feeling nothing but love toward them. It's a fairly common, but fairly powerful ending to a novel. But whatever... that's fiction. Probably mostly by Mormon authors... there are a lot of those in the genre. I was never Mormon, though.
 
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