Sojourner553

As requested, I am moving the discussion to this forum.

The initial purpose of this discussion, was to take specific verses from the Bible to demonstrate that Jesus' family and neighbors did not necessarily believe him to be divine.


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From: DavidH

In response to Sojourner's quote from Mark:
"'Where does he get all this? What is this wisdom that he has been given--
and what about these marvelous things that he can do? He's only the
carpenter, Mary's son, the brother of James, Joses, Judas and Simon; and his
sisters are living here with us!'

"And they were deeply offended with him. But Jesus said to them, 'No
prophet goes unhonored--except in his native town or with his own relations
or in his own home!'

"And he could do nothing miraculous there apart from laying his hands on a
few sick people and healing them; their lack of faith astonished him."
(Mark 6:2-6)

...

The people of his hometown where not rejecting Jesus because he was a fake, couldn't do miracles or wasn't filled with wisdom....The people of his town weren't rejecting him because he was a fake -the verses I have shown to you show that they didn't deny his wisdom or the miracles that he did. Why then did they reject him?

I think the reason is this;
The verse you have shown shows the people saying, isn't this mary's son and aren't his brothers and sisters here with us etc. Then the Bible says that they took offense at him.

The people of his town knew Jesus, many had probably grown up with him, visited his carpenter shop and given him things to repair.
I have no doubt that the people where angry and jealous, they saw no reason to believe that Jesus was anything special - he was just a commoner like the rest of them, why should he have been given such a special gift etc etc.
It's hardly surprising that they took offense at him. If you think about it - the president of the US isn't treated as the president of the US by his own family and those he grew up with.

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Do you think Bush's home town would not give him a heroes welcome, but would instead be "jealous" and "angry" with him. I think there would be a lot of parades.

I always liked Albert Schweitzer's question he posed as a young child to his Lutheran minister:
(I am paraphrasing):"What happened to the gold and other presents that the Magi had brought to Jesus--And why was Jesus and his parents still poor after this?"

BTW: The story you referenced of a young brilliant Jesus in the Temple. It occurs only in the book of Luke and sounds like a perfect parallel of the story told about Josephus as a brilliant child in the Temple astonishing the elders there.

(FYI for people reading this on the post--you probably know this DavidH-- Josesphus was a famous ancient Jewish writer born in 33 CE.)
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JOSEPHUS.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JOSEPHUS.TXT</a>
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From DavidH:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and
wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he
cannot be my disciple...And whoever of you does not renounce all that he
has cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26,33, see also Matthew 10:37).

***

This is a vivid hyperbole - basically to get the message across that Jesus must be loved even more than your immediate family. You cannot be free to love and serve God if you aren't willing to put him first in your life.
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"Vivid hyperbole?" Can you not get this message across without the "hate" word? There are a lot of Bible literalists out there hanging on every word they find in the Bible. Copycatting "Hate" words just makes them meaner.

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DavidH writes:

While still alive on the cross, the gospel writer John tells us that
Jesus saw his mother Mary. The powerful, but distant Jesus then tells his
mother "Woman, behold your son!" There is no tender exchange in conversation
recorded between Jesus and Mary. Instead, Jesus commits her to the care
of "the disciple whom he loved." (John 19:25

***

I disagree entirely with the interpretation of this verse.

1. It's amazing that Jesus wasn't consumed by self pity and agony, yet he always thought of others...Surely providing his mother with a future after he was gone is proof enough of his love for her.

2. If you study the crucifixtion you will see that even speaking caused immense agony to the person on the cross...
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In the synoptic gospels, Jesus does appear to suffer with words like, "My God, Why hath thou forsaken me."

But in John I disagree: Here Jesus states on the cross, "It is done." John was probably written originally by a gnostic writer. Throughout John, Jesus consistently talks in rather cold, unemotional and purely logical words (sort of like Spock on Star Trek). Jesus never "suffers" in John.

Gnostic Christians argued that Jesus was a spiritual being who was never made into blood and flesh. That is "why" Jesus could not suffer per the Gnostics. (Orthodox Christianity declared this a heresy and persecuted the gnostics out of existance. The Nam Hammadi find were lost gnostic writings burried to hide it from being discovered and destroyed by Orthodox Christians.)

All the loving stories of Jesus with children are from the gospel of Luke.

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If you look at the first Christians who believed in Jesus -- you see something very similar to the the numbers of people who have claimed to see Elvis sitings (after he died.)
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Doubt this very much - there were many many people who believed in Jesus.

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I was speaking of contemporaries.
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JohnH writes:
The promise of salvation by mystery religions - interestingly what if they were actually worshipping God? Even though they had not heard about him from the Israelites, what if God himself had revealed himself to them?
That could be a thought to retain, - though I am not saying that that is the case.
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You are not the first to suggest this.

CS Lewis wrote, how upon reading SIEGFRIED AND THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, that the yearning for the pagan gods had overtaken him--even
though intellectually-speaking, he did NOT believe in the existance of the
Germanic Norse gods C.S. Lewis (who described himself as a pagan during this period, but was
recalling this memory now as a Christian) assumed this feeling was in
preparation for when he would return to the worship of the "true" God:

"...I came far nearer to feeling [gratitude] about the Norse gods whom I
disbelieved in than I had ever done about the true God while I believed.
Sometimes I can almost think that I was sent back to the false gods there
to acquire some capacity for worship against the day when the true God
should recall me to Himself."

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According to the world famous Egyptologist and
scholar E.A. Wallis Budge, adherents of the Osiris cult believed that he had
risen from the dead, and that they themselves could share in his resurrection:

***
So is that just his opinion of it? You see I would have to examine the evidience so that I could make up my own opinion - following someone elses without the facts is not something I would want to do.
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this is generally accepted. Here is one link. You will want the chapters in Section IV

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a>

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JohnH writes:

However even if this was and is so, the Christian religion stems back to the time of Abraham etc. There's no evidience to suggest that our religion is from there's. Maybe another way to look at it is to say that they could well have originated from the Early Jewish tradition.
But again I have insufficient source documents to see and read up on to given a satisfactory answer.

I have to head on here, but I'll leave you with a thought.
How is any religion proved to be the true religion - bearing in mind that I believe that Satan has powers too and can to a certain extent perform miracles.
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Outstanding question! I'll tell you in another post. (This is getting too long, and I seem to be already getting in a bit of trouble discovering the rules on this site.)

But keep in mind there are a good number of Christians who realize there are myths and superstitions which have entered the Bible. They look at many stories (such as the Ark) symbolically for moral truths, goodness, and the hope for a future life.

For them, Jesus is a symbol for their religion. This outlook keeps them more openminded and tolerant towards people who are obviously good moral people -- but have chosen a different path than theirs to follow...

With this outlook -- "exactly" which religion one follows is not so important as the desire to be a good moral person and to make the world a better place.

Sojourner

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Sojourner553

DavidH posts:
How is any religion proved to be the true religion - bearing in mind that I believe that Satan has powers too and can to a certain extent perform miracles.
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Point #1: Faith alone cannot resolve this problem, but one must also employ logic:

To restate the problem: Because there are a diverse number of groups who insist that "THEY" and "ONLY THEY" have divine inspiration: How can one tell when a religious leader has truly been commissioned with a divine charter from God, as opposed to someone who is leading his followers down the path towards some ill-fated HUMAN venture?

Faith alone can not answer this question. Indeed, few could question the faith of Muslim religious fanatics who are committing suicide in Israel (the WTC terrorists are another example)--largely because they are taught that they will be rewarded by Allah for their "holy" terrorist activities.

Not to just pick on Muslims: During the religious wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholic, each side was convinced that they possessed the "true" religion and the other side was following Satan. Obviously at a minimum, one side was wrong (or as most Christians think today -- BOTH sides were wrong to engage in these inhumane wars.)

It was following these atrocities, that westerners began to question whether faith alone could resolve religious conflicts; that instead logic/reason and toleration should also prevail. Science flourished in this new environment, after laying dormant during the Dark Ages.


Point #2: One cannot necessarily trust their feelings as to what is right or wrong in religious matters (although this does not apply necessarily to morality--as I shall explain.)

I grew up feeling very spiritual -- believing I could sense God's presence always with me. Even when I was in college, I remember the instructor stating that no one could "prove" God existed. I stood up to witness before the class that "I" knew God existed, because I felt "His" closeness always with me.

Over time, I later reasoned that the source of this presence was from my own mind -- ie was internal not an external force. How did I come to change my mind?

The first dent came when I began "witnessing" to a Jewish girlfriend. Her father was out of work and she basically agreed that if I prayed and he found a good job, she would be swayed by this miracle. Well I prayed very hard, with hopes of success since this was obviously an unselfish request. But to no avail, her father had a terrible time getting a job.

I had also (naively) assumed that I could logically prove Christianity was true to my Jewish friend. But as we talked, I learned that she had a rich Jewish tradition of her own. Around this time a mutual Catholic girlfriend we both knew, came up to us (fresh after seeing Exorcist) to announce she might be possessed. (I recognized the power of suggestion was the real culpret.)

I sought help when I was asked to define heaven, but got a lot of different answers--conflicting answers. One was that when we go to heaven, the angels will be our servants because they were never tempted on earth. "Hm." I thought,"it seems to me people are making SOME things up."

Still I assumed if I just researched this more, all would be resolved.

A bigger dent occurred when my fundamentalist sister coldly announced she would risk harming me in a very traumatic way, because afterall everything that happened "would be God's will." I was very angry and determined to go out and research what gave people the right to state they "knew" God's will. I began reading analyses of the bible, including skeptical analyses:

#1. My studies and analyses found layers of superstition built upon earlier superstitions with "connections" easily seen from older religious beliefs/superstitions.

Here is the one that broke me though (probably because I had come across it myself years earlier in the Bible and thought "what?")

*in Mark 10:17-8, a stranger approaches
Jesus with the question,"Good Master, what must I do to win eternal life". Jesus replied,
"Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone'.

Religious apologists explain that Jesus was just coy -- or didn't want to announce his powers yet. To me, this meant Jesus would be lying -- a contradiction. I learned based on the historical background that the Jews expected a human to be annointed by God to become a messiah (in the tradition of King David). It was the Greeks who had a tradition of a divine savior-- including a mother that was a virgin impregnanted by a God in the sky...

* I also found there are a very large # of discrepancies in the Bible -- both the Old and New Testament. (I can easily provide details.)

#2: I looked at contemporary religions to see how unique Christianity was compared to pagan religions. I found very little that was unique to Christianity. I was amazed to have never heard of these other religions -- especially of Mithraism.

#3: Historical analysis was one dimension. Another dimension was to research whether religion made people behave better -- eg did it create civilizations as opposed to dark ages.

I began studying world history for this.
In a nutshell what I found: Liberal Christians and deists (general belief in God with no dogma) created the best societies. Atheists lost out because Marxism (and therefore communist societies) had abandoned humanist principles.

I concluded that fundamentalists(which included Christian, Jews, Muslim, AND atheists) created dark ages because of their insistance on authoritarian powers to stifle all resistance and therefore creativity.


#4. I examined the philosophical proofs for God and found these were always based on foundations of sand. All proofs have one or more fallacies in its assumptions. You can't prove God does or does not exist on paper.

#5. And the last domino to fall was my belief in my spiritual feelings or voice.

What shook me out of this was viewing how other people also claimed to feel spiritual closeness (even to converse directly with God). But I could tell from the results they were clearly speaking to themselves.

Here is one example: During my readings on religion in colonial America I came across the diary of a young, religious and sincere Protestant man around the early 1800's. Most people are not aware of it, but Christmas was very controversial back then because Luther and Calvin had denounced its celebration as a pagan custom picked up by the Catholics. (They were correct in this assessment by the way.)

Anyway this gentleman was walking down the street late Christmas eve and saw some shopkeepers had closed their storefront down for the holiday. He was so morally appalled at the prevalence of pagan beliefs around him, that he felt physically nauseated and began praying for them to see their error. It was obvious to me,
his strong spiritual feelings he experienced had no outside divine source, but came from within, complete with his local social beliefs and prejudices.

This also explained why religious fanatics are convinced they are right and lightening NEVER strikes them down. Wouldn't a true miracle have been for a voice to tell religious fanatics what they were doing was wrong?

Or--

"If God has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?"--Percy Bysshe Shelley

"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning." – Calvin

Last point:

I do desire for religion to be true. Society makes it far far easier to profess belief than disbelief. Look who makes the $millions writing books -- definitely the books on belief and miracles, not skepticism. If you want money, belief is where its at.

My sister insists that religion gives one such comfort in life's pains and sorrows that one shouldn't even take any steps to question whether it is true.

But to me its a matter of personal intergrity to search for the truth -- the REAL truth wherever it might lead you...

Along this line, I would also say, if there were a God who was weaker than the Devil (or for sake of argument say the Devil overpowered the good God) -- I would choose the side of goodness, and not power, even if it meant I would not be rewarded for my choice, or was even made to suffer for it.

How many Christians have faced answering such a dilemma? Very few! which is one reason why when I hear "just believe, just believe", it sounds so shallow to me.

Still, my readings have also shown me huge respect for moderate to liberal Christians and deists who share (along with me) a tradition of humanism -- a caring for humankind. In spiritual terms, I still view myself loosely as a deist--symbolically looking at the light of all people/spirits in the universe who strive to do good in the universe--as my comrades in religion. I do not fear death, because I know when I lay down for the last time and cease to exist, I follow the path of great spiritual heroes who strove like me to do their best to improve this world for future generations.


Sojourner

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

If that last part is true, then take it one step further and restore Jesus' humanity to him, so that you really take his message the correct way.

Gods do not exist. Men (and women) do.

Making a god out of a man is to remove that man's humanity and therefore message. It is selfish, unwarranted, childish and ludicrous so if you are seriously intent on discovering the "truth" then recognize the truth between the lies and take it to heart.

Jesus, at best, was an extraordinary Rabbi who taught his followers to question authority (which got him killed by the Romans and hated by the Sanhedrin) and that "god" is not some mythical creature, rather "god" is us and we are "god" and it's our responsibility to love and look out for one another and in so doing, the universal constant that our limited minds personify as a being will "reward" us for our good deeds and actions (in essence the Essene and/or Gnostic approach).

Anything beyond that is, IMO, snake-oil aggrandizement meant to exploit and capitalize on your gullibility, not Jesus' humanity.

Calling Jesus a supernatural being is equivalent to calling Hitler an aberrant monster. By so doing, you remove their humanity and therefore remove our ability to understand that the good and the bad are within us all as humans.

This makes Jesus inaccessible and therefore his message not for us but at us and Hitler a fluke instead of the very real representation of the "evil" that lies within us all.

Sojourner553

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Gods do not exist. Men (and women) do.

Making a god out of a man is to remove that man's humanity and therefore message....

Calling Jesus a supernatural being ...

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Did you mean to respond to my post? If so you need to reread it and show me EXACTLY where I say God is made out of a man.

Why... everyone knows "She" is a woman. (Just kidding!)

Actually what I did say is that I could be labeled a deist if God is viewed as an abstract principle such as "goodness". In which case I view liberal religious groups as using "symbols" from their religion (such as Jesus or Jehovah) as a metaphor for this abstract concept(s).

Sheesh! If you're going to criticise me, base it on what I really say!

Sojourner