djorno
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@djorno
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Post by djorno on Dec 27, 2022 23:23:38 GMT
This is a question aimed solely for non-believers. What do you think of the character Jesus Christ? Do you think he was a good person/moral teacher ? Are you indifferent towards him? Hate him?
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Post by general313 on Dec 28, 2022 0:49:03 GMT
I think the message that comes across from Jesus is mostly positive, as he emphasized love, kindness, humility and rejection of greed. It is a marked contrast from many of the other sections of the Bible that often have a vindictive, authoritarian, misogynistic, and homophobic bent.
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Dec 28, 2022 0:59:10 GMT
Based on what i know about Jesus and his teachings, i really have nothing negative to say about him.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Dec 28, 2022 1:15:21 GMT
I think overall his lessons were good, though he does tend to lose me at times. He was a pacifist which I think a lot of people tend to confuse with isolationism or noninterventionism, pacifism goes beyond merely refraining from unecessary conflicts, it's the belief that any violence is unjustifiable under any circumstances, which I think is absurd (if someone is attacking you, you have every right to fight back, not "turn the other cheek" as Jesus professed). Also his idealogy is basically anarchoprimitivism (give up all your wealth and possesions), and as someone that enjoys modern comforts and liberal democracy, I'll pass.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2022 2:04:03 GMT
Jesus taught many good lessons on how to treat people and how to find true happiness.
Many non-believers find it irritating how some cherry pick parts of the Bible for their own needs.
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Post by Vegas on Dec 28, 2022 3:15:30 GMT
(if someone is attacking you, you have every right to fight back, not "turn the other cheek" as Jesus professed). The quote is "If someone slaps you"... which is meant more as an insult than an actual "attack"... Not so sure that implies that you shouldn't defend yourself from being assaulted.
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Post by Vegas on Dec 28, 2022 3:18:51 GMT
Bethany: Wait a minute. Christ. You know Christ?
Rufus: Knew him? Shit, nigga owes me 12 bucks!
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Post by Vegas on Dec 28, 2022 3:21:57 GMT
I do like the Jesus story...
Humble beginnings. Preaches peace, love, forgiveness... Slams hypocrisy and self-righteousness... Gives hope of redemption... Promises to rid the world of evil.
Here's to hoping.
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Post by paulslaugh on Dec 28, 2022 6:15:21 GMT
If he indeed existed, which I think he did because Paul of Tarsus was actively rooting out Jesus followers in Jewish communities about twenty years later, I think he was a preacher of Jewish End Times prophecy who thought fighting the Romans was futile. Judging by the content of message possibly influenced by Essenes teachings, which are teachings of love and peace. So, he wasn’t a zealot, but preached the opposite, not unlike Gandhi whom he influenced 2,000 years later.
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Post by permutojoe on Dec 28, 2022 7:10:22 GMT
Not a believer that he was a divine being but other than that I am a huge fan.
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Post by phludowin on Dec 28, 2022 10:46:28 GMT
Not sure if he existed as a real person. Probably did; but the character depicted in the Gospels is probably mostly made up. As for the teachings depicted in said gospels, especially the sermon on the mount: I agree with a few and disagree with others.
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Post by amyghost on Dec 28, 2022 14:08:06 GMT
Not greatly differently from what I think of most cult leaders, many of whose careers followed a similar trajectory: humble, wanting to do good and anxious to deliver a meaningful and life-changing message; as the following and prestige increases, a tendency to become also increasingly likely to believe one's own press and to develop a certain arrogance ("The poor ye shall always have with you; ye shall not always have me?" Really? What's up with that? One can almost hear a Jim Jones uttering an almost equivalent version of that in his latter career...).
If he existed at all, Jesus was definitely a human being, not a divinity; preached a message that was about equal parts positive and negative; and likely would have gone down to history a more or less forgotten martyr to his cause had he not been 'blessed' with the greatest post-mortem PR the world has ever known.
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Post by clusium on Dec 28, 2022 14:21:26 GMT
Not greatly differently from what I think of most cult leaders, many of whose careers followed a similar trajectory: humble, wanting to do good and anxious to deliver a meaningful and life-changing message; as the following and prestige increases, a tendency to become also increasingly likely to believe one's own press and to develop a certain arrogance ("The poor ye shall always have with you; ye shall not always have me?" Really? What's up with that? One can almost hear a Jim Jones uttering an almost equivalent version of that in his latter career...).
If he existed at all, Jesus was definitely a human being, not a divinity; preached a message that was about equal parts positive and negative; and likely would have gone down to history a more or less forgotten martyr to his cause had he not been 'blessed' with the greatest post-mortem PR the world has ever known. Our Lord Jesus Knew He was Going to Be Crucified. St. Mary Magdalene showed Our Lord her own love & humility by anointing His Feet with her expensive perfumes & oils, only to be ridiculed by Judas Iscariot right in front of everyone. Our Lord Saw right through Judas, knowing that he really wanted the financial amount from those oils to line his own pockets. It's interesting to note that in all the Gospels that record the anointing Of Our Lord's Feet are recorded, it follows immediately with Judas Iscariot's betrayal.
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Post by amyghost on Dec 28, 2022 14:29:35 GMT
Not greatly differently from what I think of most cult leaders, many of whose careers followed a similar trajectory: humble, wanting to do good and anxious to deliver a meaningful and life-changing message; as the following and prestige increases, a tendency to become also increasingly likely to believe one's own press and to develop a certain arrogance ("The poor ye shall always have with you; ye shall not always have me?" Really? What's up with that? One can almost hear a Jim Jones uttering an almost equivalent version of that in his latter career...).
If he existed at all, Jesus was definitely a human being, not a divinity; preached a message that was about equal parts positive and negative; and likely would have gone down to history a more or less forgotten martyr to his cause had he not been 'blessed' with the greatest post-mortem PR the world has ever known. Our Lord Jesus Knew He was Going to Be Crucified. St. Mary Magdalene showed Our Lord her own love & humility by anointing His Feet with her expensive perfumes & oils, only to be ridiculed by Judas Iscariot right in front of everyone. Our Lord Saw right through Judas, knowing that he really wanted the financial amount from those oils to line his own pockets. It's interesting to note that in all the Gospels that record the anointing Of Our Lord's Feet are recorded, it follows immediately with Judas Iscariot's betrayal. It doesn't alter the fact that he was lolling about amongst his followers, allowing a woman (possibly of dubious virtue, at least by the standards of the time) to wash his feet and then dry them with her own hair--sounds pretty Roman Emperor-ish to me--and then telling those same followers who wanted to sell the balm and use the proceeds to aid the poor not to do so with the words quoted above. I suspect it was more a case of Judas Iscariot seeing through him, insofar as that episode certainly does nothing to make Jesus appear as any sort of paragon of humility or champion the less fortunate by that point in his career. And for the record, I don't take the Gospels as an accurate or unbiased historical record of anything whatsoever.
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Post by faustus5 on Dec 28, 2022 15:00:44 GMT
It doesn't alter the fact that he was lolling about amongst his followers, allowing a woman (possibly of dubious virtue, at least by the standards of the time) to wash his feet and then dry them with her own hair--sounds pretty Roman Emperor-ish to me--and then telling those same followers who wanted to sell the balm and use the proceeds to aid the poor not to do so with the words quoted above. Holy crap, that is truly creepy and cultish behavior.
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Post by clusium on Dec 28, 2022 15:20:09 GMT
Our Lord Jesus Knew He was Going to Be Crucified. St. Mary Magdalene showed Our Lord her own love & humility by anointing His Feet with her expensive perfumes & oils, only to be ridiculed by Judas Iscariot right in front of everyone. Our Lord Saw right through Judas, knowing that he really wanted the financial amount from those oils to line his own pockets. It's interesting to note that in all the Gospels that record the anointing Of Our Lord's Feet are recorded, it follows immediately with Judas Iscariot's betrayal. It doesn't alter the fact that he was lolling about amongst his followers, allowing a woman (possibly of dubious virtue, at least by the standards of the time) to wash his feet and then dry them with her own hair--sounds pretty Roman Emperor-ish to me--and then telling those same followers who wanted to sell the balm and use the proceeds to aid the poor not to do so with the words quoted above. I suspect it was more a case of Judas Iscariot seeing through him, insofar as that episode certainly does nothing to make Jesus appear as any sort of paragon of humility or champion the less fortunate by that point in his career. And for the record, I don't take the Gospels as an accurate or unbiased historical record of anything whatsoever. What do you thing Our Lord Jesus Should have Done? Tell St. Mary to get that stuff off of Him & rid of it???!!! Wouldn't such a gesture be shoving her humility & generosity back in her face???!!! No, I would say that it was a definite case of Our Lord Jesus Seeing through Judas. The Gospel according to St. John says that Judas handled the money purse of the Apostles, & would take the money for himself. That was the reason why he was so disappointed with seeing such expensive ointment & perfumes being used in the way that they were. Because he would have rather preferred that St. Mary Magdalene have shown her love for Our Lord by selling those things so that she would have donated all the proceeds into their money bag (that he was put in charge of), so that he could get his hands on it. Nobody said that the Gospels were unbiased. They were written by Our Lord's Apostles & disciples to preach Our Lord to the world. I strongly suspect that the same thing can be said about most of our world's religious, national, & pretty much all other kinds of historical writings too.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Dec 28, 2022 16:24:36 GMT
wash his feet and then dry them with her own hair--sounds pretty Roman Emperor-ish to me--and then telling those same followers who wanted to sell the balm and use the proceeds to aid the poor not to do so with the words quoted above. She wasn't washing his feet and drying them with her hair. That would be admittedly very weird, not to mention ineffective. She was pouring perfume on his feet and spreading it with her hair - so they're essentially sharing the perfume in an intimate manner - still pretty weird from our perspective granted but definitely less BDSM! The passage makes clear that it is meant to be symbolic of anointing a corpse. It's not portrayed like a Roman emperor using his slaves like mere objects. As for selling it for the poor - the moral seems to be that we should be able to give gifts to show our affection to one another, without thinking it's immoral not to spend the money on the poor instead. It's also made clear that Judas doesn't really care about the poor and was just trying to throw shade on Mary and Jesus.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Dec 28, 2022 16:28:07 GMT
Because he would have rather preferred that St. Mary Magdalene have shown her love for Our Lord by selling those things so that she would have donated all the proceeds into their money bag I've never actually considered Mary in that story to be Mary Magdalene before. Had a Google there and it seems to be a matter of some disagreement!
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djorno
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@djorno
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Post by djorno on Dec 28, 2022 17:14:03 GMT
Jesus taught many good lessons on how to treat people and how to find true happiness. Many non-believers find it irritating how some cherry pick parts of the Bible for their own needs. Couldn’t Christians flip the same argument against non-believers? Your post is kind of a case in point.
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Post by Karl Aksel on Dec 28, 2022 19:16:15 GMT
Basically a good role model, for Christians and non-Christians alike. The overall message of "hate the sin but love the sinner" is something of particular pertinence these days, when we're actively looking for reasons to cancel people.
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