They think, “Jesus was cool. I like him, and I’m gonna try to be like him.” Kind of like their guiding light is what would Jesus do? But there isn’t a focus on identification, recruiting others, judging others based on their religion, fear of God, fear of punishment for sinning, respect for clergy as an authority, rituals, worship, etc. Basically, just the example of Jesus’ life.
inb4: Christian lol!! got em!
Like uh… normal? Jesus, as described, seems like a pretty chill dude. It’s christianity that gets into the crazy shit.
I take it you haven’t read the book of John?
Yeah. There’s some good stuff there, like 8:32*, but it’s full of so much crap** that… urgh.
*“And you’ll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
**Give the whole chapter 5 a check, specially 5:14; crippling people is apparently their god’s punishment for sinning. Or 3:36, someone gets really pissy if you don’t believe him!
I was thinking John 6 is pretty nuts tbh. There are a lot of problems with Christ, like how quiet and accepting he seemed about slavery, or how fragile he is about his ego and being respected as God, the central message of Christ is about his divinity, not about moral teachings. He threatened anyone who disagreed with his divinity with eternal damnation and so on. Just not the kind of person you would think of as a “chill dude”, rather the description “crazy” comes to mind when I read the book of John especially.
His moral teachings are irrelevant. It’s like how when cops volunteer to do a charity car wash. Moral behaviour doesn’t get you everlasting life.
yeah, at least not according to him; but his moral teachings got a lot of people in the door and interested in following him, and the whole “faith without works is dead” thing (book of James is pretty lit tbh)
People who model their lives after the teachings of Jesus are pretty rare. I think it is more psychologically valuable because Christians are able to psychologically transfer the moral qualities of Jesus to themselves. Jesus is “good” in ways that most Christians today don’t even give a shit about, but it gives him moral character, and so it allows Christians to feel like they have moral character as well.
In fact, I was going to link to the article about “moral licensing” as though I actually knew what I was talking about (I don’t) and I see there is a section about exactly this idea, where people see themselves as having the moral qualities of others in their in-group:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing#Group_membership
So in a way, the stories about Jesus allow Christianity to fill an important spiritual role in people’s lives: assuring them that they are good people. But it’s tricking them, and Jesus has to be a model of good morality for this trick to work.
John is way sus.
not sure what you mean
The Gospel of John is the last one written, much later than the others and is full of things that are suspicious. Almost as if it was specifically written to direct a nascent cult into the direction it wanted them to go and not particularly inspired by any actual events.
oh interesting, TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John#Historical_reliability
Thanks! I’ll have to read the book of Mark and see how it compares (esp. I wonder if the events depicted in John 6 occur in the book of Mark).
Nah, I was brought to church as a kid but I haven’t really read the Bible closely. Honestly, I’m just going off a general read of “dude who helps people in need and isn’t an ass”.
I recommend you read the book of John!
I wrote a longer response to Kolanaki if you want to read that as well, sorta summarizes what I think are some of the relevant bits as to why Christ isn’t such a great role model.
Well, he explicitly condoned slavery, so…