Letters to the Editor
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Check out "alternative Christian author" Donald Miller
You sound like a smart, level-headed kid...in fact, you remind me of me, two or three decades ago. Keep reading, keep talking to people, keep an open mind, and you'll be fine.
I was raised in one of the more liberal Protestant churches (UCC), but for the past 20 years I have pretty much drifted away from any sort of organized religion. My mother was never quite able to accept my discomfort with going to church (there's a line from an old Simon & Garfunkel song that sticks in my head: "Blessed is the church; service makes me nervous") but we were able to work around it and had a close, loving relationship, especially in her last ten years.
I encourage you to check out the work of Donald Miller, who considers himself a Christian, but questions nearly everything about traditional Christianity. Here's a link for an article I just read in today's paper:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gq7KQubcoZYlyDvdQtL1eVU3fEzQD8U7QC2O0
And good luck--you're on the right track!
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Jesus :-(
> But ask yourself this: what was Jesus like?
Unsmiling.
The gospels contradict themselves left, right and centre ... not one of them, though, has Jesus smiling, laughing, making a joke, finding the humour in a situation, noting an irony.
People hear that, they rebel against the idea. We've all seen pictures of Jesus smiling at a child, yes? Check your bibles. Plenty of the Old Testament prophets and kings do. Mohammed smiles.
Remember this mantra: Jesus Never Once Smiled.
There are Jesuses alive to day - the people who hand out odd little pamphlets on the street, with weird staring eyes and no self awareness; gazing at us from martyr videos; solemnly saying God condemned New Orleans for having lesbians.
Jesus was, by any definition, a religious extremist and fanatic. His concerns were narrow, not even local, let alone global. In twentieth century terms he was Koresh, not Mother Theresa. Luckily he has the best spin doctors in history and two thousand years of persecution of non-believers backing him up.
He's no role model. If you want to make up an ideal man whose life you want to emulate, call him Jesus if you want. But that's psychotherapy and projection, not theology or history.
Chances are you're already a better person than the hallucinating iron age jihadist who's there on the pages of the Bible.
If you really want to do what Jesus would do, quit your job, smash up a place of worship and commit a capital offence, shouting that you're doing God's work and that you know that because God's your dad.
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Leaving the flock...
LW is not alone, I and several friends left the orbit of theism by the power of independent thinking. It's not easy, but it's the only path to a self respecting intellectual honesty.
That's why independent thinking is so dangerous, to social control freaks.
New word of the day, don't become an atheist or an agnostic, become an "apatheist". Truly transcendental.
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liar liar pants on fire!
The anon just below this must not have read the Bible.
Just off the top of my head, I can give you a pun Jesus made: Your name is Rock, and on this Rock I will found my church.
I can't recall any outright jokes, but then the point of most jokes is cruelty. Several of his parables are witty; so was his response to those who asked if they should pay taxes.
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Which came first, the Rock or the Peter ?
You can believe Jesus was joking when he said that, but there's no reason to think that Peter wasn't created and named for that role.
We can't know that Jesus didn't have a sense of humour, but then we really can't know that the whole story wasn't made up.
Believe if you must. As an apatheist, I just don't care.
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Jesus was cruel, though.
"I can't recall any outright jokes, but then the point of most jokes is cruelty."
Jesus didn't have any problem with being cruel, though:
'If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.'
Not exactly Oprah-like there, is he? He gets angry, he's stern, he shouts. Found the bit where he laughs, yet?
The idea of a nice, fluffy, cheery Jesus is incredibly recent. Until about 1750, it would have probably got you burned at the stake - which, as He says there is exactly the right response to the question WWJD?
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Um ...
> New word of the day, don't become an atheist or an agnostic, become an "apatheist".<
Um ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism
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To Apatheist guy ...
... Colin McGinn has a much cooler term: 'post-theist'.
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He's got God in his writers' room, and that's the best he can do?
"Just off the top of my head, I can give you a pun Jesus made: Your name is Rock, and on this Rock I will found my church."
It may lose something in translation from the Aramaic.
As do:
"Unless you repent, you will all perish," Jesus chortled.
"And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple", but he was having a laugh.
"I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." he giggled, uncontrollably.
People working for the Jesus Industry, the 'Big Jesus' lobbyists, if you will, would have you believe that he was a role model, a great bloke, the sort of guy you could sit and have a beer with and would really listen. A bloke who doesn't really mean all those racist things he said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS_Uvg56U_o
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Some of you commment-posters ought to rethink what you said-
The LW is confused. She needs to discover her spirituality and what she believes in independently. She doesn't need to read comments of people yelling back and forth about what Jesus was like. Don't take advantage of this opportunity to push your beliefs onto the LW.