Jesus – practically perfect in every way.
Or was that Mary Poppins?
Christians go to great lengths to present Jesus as perfect. They do this by ignoring the evidence, such as we have it in the gospels, and by believing blindly in a false version of the god-man perpetrated by those who’ve gone before them. They call it ‘faith’; the rest of us know it as cognitive dissonance. Step out from behind it, look at the Biblical record without preconceptions and what you will see is that Jesus was an unmitigated disaster.
His prophecies were wrong, his promises untrue, his morality, as his followers demonstrate to this day, impossible. His mission, to herald the arrival of the Kingdom of God for the Jewish people, was a failure that led, ultimately, to untold evil being committed in his name. He was responsible for the stultification of mankind’s cultural and intellectual development, and, still today, the suppression of reason, autonomy and equality. The world would have been a better place if he had never lived, or at least if those who followed him hadn’t made a religion out of his failure. He believed that the root cause of illness was sin and demonic possession: he was uneducated and unsophisticated. He was inconsistent, unpleasant to those who opposed him and dismissive of those outside his own circle. He was arrogant, abusive and divisive.
He was, in all of this, thoroughly human. He was not God, nor the Son of God, and he was not delivering any divine salvation plan. He was a charismatic, Jewish fanatic from a superstitious backwater of the first century. He has, or should have, no more relevance to the lives of people today than any of the other itinerant preachers of the time. I say this not because I’m choosing to ‘reject’ him; in spite of the name of this blog he can no more be ‘rejected’ than other ‘divine’ figures like Mithras, Krishna and Superman. Nor do I say it because I want to revel in my own ‘sin’, as Christians assert of those of us who really don’t see what all the fuss is about. I say it because this is what the evidence shows us.
Read the synoptic gospels for yourself, ignoring the interpretive gloss invented by Paul and later Christians, and this flawed individual is the Jesus you’ll see.
rejectingjesus, 
It’s not surprising that an author of a blog titled “rejectingjesus” might cite “evidence” that doesn’t exist. Accepting Jesus is the Son of God is a matter of faith, especially 2000 years later. To say there’s evidence to the contrary is faith based as well. Either the Bible is the inspired word of God preserved by a supernatural being or it’s a bastardized book of stories written by different men.
I do like your interpretation over Islam and New Agers who claim Jesus was a really nice guy, but not the Son of God. Jesus was either who he said he was or like you say “a charismatic, Jewish fanatic.” It’s one of the two.
If you are right why even bother with this blog? Why does it bother you? If Jesus wasn’t who he said he was and never existed mankind would still be killing, raping, and stealing. The idea that religion caused man to be mean is kind of shallow you must agree.
On the other hand if there is a God and evil does exist it would be everywhere and would blame everything for continuing.
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Hi Henshaw. Thanks for your comment. I thought I’d respond to your points one by one:
You write: ‘It’s not surprising that an author of a blog titled “rejectingjesus” might cite “evidence” that doesn’t exist.’
Well, Hen, I did consider providing chapter and verse for all the claims I make about Jesus. The ‘evidence’ is in the synoptic gospels as I suggest at the end of the post. I mention much of it in my earlier posts too. The fact you don’t want to acknowledge such evidence is ‘not surprising’ (cognitive dissonance and all that) but if you want me to, I can provide the necessary references.
You write: ‘Accepting Jesus is the Son of God is a matter of faith, especially 2000 years later. To say there’s evidence to the contrary is faith based as well.’
Your first claim here is correct; ‘accepting Jesus’ is a matter of faith and as such does not rest on or even see the need for evidence. Your second statement is an assertion not a demonstration: if what I say is evidence-based (and it is) then it cannot, by definition, also be faith-based.
You write: ‘Either the Bible is the inspired word of God preserved by a supernatural being or it’s a bastardized book of stories written by different men.’
Once again correct. It’s the latter.
You write: ‘Jesus was either who he said he was or like you say “a charismatic, Jewish fanatic.” It’s one of the two.’
You’ve got real problems here, in that in the synoptic gospels Jesus doesn’t say who he is – he certainly doesn’t claim to be divine. If, as the author of John’s gospel has him do, he did make such claims, why don’t the earlier gospel writers know about it and include it? Guess which of your two alternatives is correct then. Gosh darn it, it’s the latter again.
You write:’If you are right why even bother with this blog? Why does it bother you?’
So you didn’t read the short bio which explains my reasoning behind this blog? For shame. On top of the fact I gave Jesus the best years of my life, I find the persistent proselytising by Christians to be thoroughly objectionable, their treatment of gay people generally deplorable and their uncritical adherence to superstition incomprehensible. If, through this blog, I encourage one person to question or even abandon the Jesus cult, I’ll be more than pleased. That’s why I bother.
You write:’If Jesus wasn’t who he said he was and never existed mankind would still be killing, raping, and stealing.’
In other words, he failed to improve the human condition in any way at all. We still kill, rape and steal. Wasn’t that one of the points I was making in my post?
You write:’The idea that religion caused man to be mean is kind of shallow you must agree.’
‘Fraid I mustn’t. Religion has contributed significantly to man’s inhumanity to man…and to woman too. Try Sam Harris’s ‘The End of Faith’ for some of the evidence.
You write: ‘On the other hand if there is a God and evil does exist it would be everywhere and would blame everything for continuing.’
Struggling with this one, Hen. It doesn’t really make sense. Looks like you’re saying that if God existed the world would be a worse place than it is. Well, thank God he doesn’t.
Neil
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You seem to be a smart person and I’m well researched on religion (and the synoptic gospels) as well. Certainly you must agree smarter people than either you or me have researched this and have drawn opposite conclusions Such is the state of mankind.
From a much broader point of view if there were no concept of God or religion the world would be much the same. It’s a very naive point of view to suggest if there were no concept of religion that the world would be a better place (Southpark had a great satire piece on that idea).
Christ came to save us from death and sin, not to make our lives better for our short time on Earth. I appreciate your point of view. People who look for the truth often find it.
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Hi Henshaw.
‘Christ came to save us from death and sin, not to make our lives better for our short time on Earth.’ He did? Where does he say that? Paul claims something of the sort, I’ll grant you, but isn’t it strange Jesus doesn’t mention it, even though the gospels were written well after Paul’s idiosyncratic interpretation of Jesus’ life and death (mainly the latter)?
Jesus himself says that his mission was to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth (Matthew 3.2 etc) and to show his fellow Jews how to be part of it through being ‘righteous’, by which he means serving others (Matthew 25. 35-40 etc). The ‘gospel’ Jesus preaches (Matthew 4.23) involves no magic salvation formula.
What’s more, he certainly does say daily life will be better once the Kingdom comes (Luke 4.18 & 19). As you know, the Kingdom didn’t arrive when he said it would (Matthew 16:27-28; Luke 21:27-28, 33-34 etc). And his repeated assurance that his return and the Kingdom’s arrival would be within his disciples’ lifetime tells us he was not working to a schedule over 2000 years later.
Hope there’s enough evidence here for you that the Jesus you’ve been persuaded to worship is a construct of Paul’s – his ‘Christ’ – who bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the gospels and his declared mission.
I can make only brief mention of these things here; can I encourage you to read my book ‘Why Christians Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead’, available on Amazon, for a more comprehensive consideration of them.
Neil
> Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 21:17:25 +0000 > To: acalibre@hotmail.co.uk >
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I’m not much of a “end timer.” I don’t believe in the rapture. I believe the Kingdom of God has already come. It came at Pentecost and lives in every believer.
It’s difficult to discern spiritual things with Early eyes and I know that doesn’t make sense from your perspective. Thanks again for you respectful comments.
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